LAND-USE INTENSIFICATION TRENDS IN THE RIO DE LA PLATA REGION OF SOUTH AMERICA: TOWARD SPECIALIZATION OR RECOUPLING CROP AND LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION

Highlights

• Current intensification trends in the Rio de la Plata need urgent re-direction.

•Integrated crop-livestock systems reconcile food production with ecosystem services.

•Case studies validate recoupling as a sustainable way to ecological intensification.

Abstract

The Rio de la Plata region comprises central Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. Modern agriculture developed around 1900 with recent decades being characterized by the advance of cropping areas over native grasslands. Highly specialized agriculture has decoupled crop and livestock production but has succeeded in intensifying yields. However, significant losses of ecosystem services have been reported. Thus, questions have been raised on the sustainability of this pathway. A glance at world regions that have experienced similar trends suggests that an urgent course correction is needed. A major concern has been the lack of diversity in regions with highly specialized agriculture, promoting renewed interest in integrated crop-livestock systems (ICLS), not only because ICLS are more diverse than specialized systems, but also because they are rare examples of reconciliation between agroecosystem intensification and environmental quality. Consequently, this paper discusses alternatives to redesign multifunctional landscapes based on ICLS. Recent data provide evidence that recoupling crop and animal production increases the resilience of nutrient cycling functions and economic indicators to external stressors, enabling these systems to face climate-market uncertainty and reconcile food production with the provision of diverse ecosystem services. Finally, these concepts are exemplified in case studies where this perspective has been successfully applied.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

grazing / integrated crop-livestock systems / mixed crops-livestock / Pampa

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Acknowledgements

We thank China Agricultural University for the organization of the workshop “Integrated animal-crop production systems”. We also thank Thainá Freitas for her valuable support in the preparation of Fig. 1. This work was supported by CAPES—Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel within the Ministry of Education of Brazil, and financial support from the Brazilian National Research Council and from ANII-Uruguay projects FSA-PP-2018-148651, FSA-PI-2018-148819 and FSA-PP-2018-1-148336.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Paulo César de Faccio Carvalho, Jean Víctor Savian, Tomas Della Chiesa, William de Souza Filho, José Alfredo Terra, Priscila Pinto, Amanda Posselt Martins, Sebastian Villarino, Júlio Kuhn Da Trindade, Pedro Arthur de Albuquerque Nunes, and Gervasio Piñeiro declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2021. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)