Partial Grazing Exclusion as Strategy to Reduce Land Degradation in the Traditional Brazilian Faxinal System: Field Data and Farmers’ Perceptions

Valdemir Antoneli, Manuel Pulido Fernández, Taís de Oliveira, Javier Lozano-Parra, João Anésio Bednarz, Michael Vrahnakis and Ramón García-Marín
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Valdemir Antoneli: Department of Geography, Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste, Irati, P.C. 84500-000 Paraná, Brazil
Manuel Pulido Fernández: GeoEnvironmental Research Group, University of Extremadura, 10071 Cáceres, Spain
Taís de Oliveira: Department of Geography, Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste, Irati, P.C. 84500-000 Paraná, Brazil
Javier Lozano-Parra: Instituto de Geografía, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 7820436 Santiago, Chile
João Anésio Bednarz: Department of Geography, Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste, Irati, P.C. 84500-000 Paraná, Brazil
Michael Vrahnakis: Department of Forestry, Wood Sciences &Design, University of Thessaly, 43100 Karditsa, Greece
Ramón García-Marín: Department of Geography, University of Murcia, 30001 Murcia, Spain

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 18, 1-13

Abstract: Land degradation is becoming a serious concern for the sustainability of traditional agrosilvopastoral systems such as the Brazilian faxinal. The IAP (Environmental Institute of the Federal State of Paraná) is favoring the partial exclusion to grazing for 10 years as strategy both to recover degraded lands and to reduce negative effects. Nevertheless, this strategy is being followed by a reduced number of owners ( faxinalenses ) and little is known about the effectiveness of these measures due to either lack of field data and knowledge on faxinalenses’ perceptions. We have identified one out of few farms that have followed this official strategy and, within the same farm, we have compared values of some soil properties (bulk density, porosity, water holding capacity, penetration resistance, soil organic matter and root density) from an excluded area to grazing for 10 years, with some areas that represent a gradient of grazing intensity (natural forest, secondary forest, degraded forest, grassland and a degraded area by pigs). In addition, we have interviewed some faxinalenses (one faxinal farm is owned by several farmers) in order to better understand how the risk of land degradation is perceived by them and their opinions about the usefulness of partial grazing exclusion as a strategy to improve the management of their farms. The results have shown that soil quality increases considerably as a consequence of grazing exclusion, in spite of land has been used for cropping yerba mate during the exclusion time, but faxinalenses are not mindful of these benefits and they are no longer interested in excluding other areas of their farms. They think this strategy is simply an obligation imposed by the environmental authority.

Keywords: agrosilvopastoral land use; sustainable agriculture; soil quality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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