Perceptions of integrated crop-livestock systems for sustainable intensification in the Brazilian Amazon

Land Use Policy 82 (2019) 841–853

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Perceptions of integrated crop-livestock systems for sustainable intensification in the Brazilian Amazon

T

O. Cortnera,b, , R.D. Garretta,b, J.F. Valentimc, J. Ferreirad, M.T. Nilese, J. Reisf, J. Gila,g ⁎

a

Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, 685 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA, 02215, USA Departments of Environmental System Science and Humanities, Social, and Political Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland c Embrapa Acre, Rio Branco, AC, CEP 70770-901 Brazil d Embrapa Amazônia Oriental, Travessa Dr. Enéas Pinheiro s/n, CP 48, Belém, PA, 66.095-100, Brazil e Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences & Food Systems Program, University of Vermont, 350 Carrigan Wing, 109 Carrigan Drive, Burlington, VT, 05405, USA f Embrapa Agrossilvipastoril, Rodovia MT 222 KM 2,5, Caixa Postal 343, Cep: 78550-970, Sinop, MT, Brazil g Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 430, 6700 AK Wageningen, the Netherlands b

ARTICLE INFO

ABSTRACT

Keywords: Innovation Integrated systems Sustainable agriculture Pasture intensification Technology diffusion Farmer decision-making Supply chains

Sustainable intensification of existing global croplands and rangelands is a pressing challenge to reconcile competing demands on land systems for food production and conservation of natural ecosystems. In Brazil, the world’s second-largest beef-producing country, intensification of pasture-based production systems is central to both improving livelihoods and reducing deforestation, since low-productivity, low-income cattle ranches occupy a majority of the agricultural land area. Integrated crop-livestock systems (ICLS) present a promising opportunity in the array of possible agricultural intensification strategies for Brazil because they have the potential to reclaim vast areas of degraded pastures while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the previous research on ICLS, particularly in Brazil, has focused on agronomic and economic aspects. Here we examine local perspectives of ICLS to better illuminate what other concerns, besides agronomic and economic outcomes, might guide farmers’ decisions to adopt this (and other) agricultural intensification strategies. We are particularly interested in the degree to which structural factors interact with personal experiences to shape information and values and farmers’ understanding of the costs and benefits of adopting a new technology. Using semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of producers in four states in the Brazilian Amazon, we find that existing adopters perceived ICLS as a beneficial strategy for increasing the economic value and competitiveness of their farm, while most non-adopters did not. Ranchers in particular perceived intensification as a necessity to maintain their livelihood amidst declining profits and increased environmental oversight. However, both adopters and non-adopters described numerous structural barriers that impeded greater adoption of ICLS in the region, including problems obtaining qualified labor, a lack of marketing options, poor infrastructure, an unsupportive regulatory environment, and in some regions, poorly drained soils. Furthermore, non-monetary motives, such as maintaining one’s existing quality of life and traditions, often drove decisions regardless of expected profit-maximization pathways. This work underscores the need to employ a more diverse set of policy tools beyond credit subsidies to encourage adoption of sustainable intensification strategies, including education programs, payments for the ecosystem services, and improved transportation and supply chain infrastructure that can support intensification and help create a climate of innovation.

1. Introduction Agricultural management decisions, affecting 37% of global land area and at least 570 million farms, are central to many global sustainability challenges, including rural poverty, food security, water withdrawals, ecosystem degradation, and biodiversity loss (FAO, 2014, 2018; Barbier and Hochard, 2016; Lowder et al., 2016). To address ⁎

these challenges, there is a pressing need to identify agricultural practices that can provide greater environmental benefits while maintaining or improving food production and rural incomes in the face of resource constraints. Included under this umbrella of sustainable agriculture practices are ecological intensification, conservation agriculture, organic agriculture, permaculture, and integrated crop, livestock, and forestry systems (Guthman, 2000; Pretty, 2000; Sulc and Tracy, 2007;

Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (O. Cortner), [email protected] (J.F. Valentim).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.01.006 Received 23 April 2018; Received in revised form 2 December 2018; Accepted 8 January 2019 0264-8377/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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FAO, 2009; Greiner et al., 2009; Bell and Moore, 2012; Tittonell et al., 2016). Though there is a large body of work studying the structural (e.g., culture, markets, governance, and ecology) and individual determinants of sustainable agriculture adoption (e.g., (Batz et al., 1999; Prokopy et al., 2008; Greiner et al., 2009; Reimer et al., 2012)), fewer studies have focused on how producers perceive these practices and how perceptions influence adoption, especially of integrated crop and livestock systems (ICLS) (Garrett et al., 2017b). Almost no studies have focused on understanding how farmers’ perspectives differ from other local stakeholders, even though they are likely to be quite different and may reveal important disconnects between rural knowledge communities (Latawiec et al., 2017). The absence of local perspectives is of concern, since the people ultimately making or influencing the decision to adopt a particular practice are farmers, agribusinesses, and extension agents (Assunção et al., 2013; Latawiec et al., 2017). Better understanding of farmers’ perceptions about different agricultural systems and the degree to which they align with scientific assessments is critical for explaining behaviors that don’t conform to expectations. Here we focus on assessing the perceptions of farmers, agribusiness professionals, extension agents, and researchers regarding ICLS in the Brazilian Amazon. ICLS are agricultural systems that integrate crops, livestock and/or trees in combination or in a rotation on the same area (Balbino et al., 2011; Carvalho et al., 2014). ICLS are promising strategies for sustainable agricultural intensification in the Amazon region for two reasons. First, they address widespread soil and pasture degradation by incorporating nitrogen fixing crops and other soil correctives such as lime and phosphorus into continuous pasture areas, which can improve productivity and profitability of those pastures (Landers, 2007). Second, they reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with production by improving daily cattle weight gain through better pasture quality and availability of supplemental feed (Cohn et al., 2014; Bogaerts et al., 2017; Gil et al., 2018). Specifically, we ask: i) Do farmers and local experts believe ICLS can address important local livelihood concerns? ii) What barriers have farmers encountered in adopting these systems? and iii) What enabling conditions (policies, market opportunities, knowledge, and assistance) could further facilitate ICLS adoption? Our work exposes the diversity of perceptions that farmers possess about sustainable intensification options within the Amazon and highlights explanations for why adoption levels of ICLS in particular remain low despite clear potential economic benefits to farmers (Gil et al., 2018). By assessing the nuances of local perceptions of ICLS in Brazil, this work fills a knowledge gap in understanding the way farmers and experts are interpreting the benefits, risks, and challenges associated with an agriculture intensification strategy that is being heavily promoted by the Brazilian government (Observatório ABC, 2018). It also offers theoretical contributions from theories on bounded rationality and valuenorm-belief for understanding the non-monetary factors that influence agricultural and environmental behaviors, contributing more broadly to the field of sustainable intensification and agricultural technology adoption.

information made salient by social and ecological processes (Stern et al., 1995). Personal experience will also influence values. Together experience and values mediate which information an individual will consider and how they will consider it. On longer time scales this social learning can become embedded in culture, producing complex sets of rules, cues, and motivations that shape individual morals and world views (Henrich et al., 2001). Aside from this “cultural transmission”, information is also shaped by markets and governance, as well as the local ecological environment in which an individual exists. As a consequence of the diverse structural factors that shape individual experiences and the unique sets of information and values that individuals possess, it is possible to see a wide variety of behaviors among individuals experiencing similar conditions. Here we argue that the study of farmers’ perceptions of an agricultural technology can help reveal the importance of personal experience with these technologies and the structural factors that are shaping their information and values. Better understanding of these parameters, in turn, helps explain why farmers’ behaviors may not conform to expectations. Value-belief-norm (VBN) theory links personal values, beliefs about the ecological environment, and personal norms and applies it to non-activist environmental behavior. The VBN approach provides a set of principles on which to build understanding of environmentally significant behaviors and acknowledges that these behaviors should be theorized separately because the important causal factors are likely to differ substantially across behaviors and individuals (Stern, 2000). The influence of perceptions on decision-making has been noted elsewhere in the land change science community. Meyfroidt (2013) posits a feedback loop linking environmental changes to land use practices via environmental cognitions, which are the perception, interpretation, and evaluation of environmental change. Land use systems undergo changes as a result of large-scale socioeconomic changes as well as these local social-ecological feedback loops (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2010; Lamarque et al., 2014), dependent on environmental change and human perception of the system (Ostrom, 2009; Meyfroidt, 2013). Here we bring attention to the importance of perceptions and the diverse value and information systems that shape land use decisions. 2.2. Factors influencing farmers’ perceptions of agricultural technologies Drawing on bounded rationality and value-belief-norm theories, we develop a more specific conceptual model of farmer behavior with respect to sustainable agriculture technology innovation and adoption, which links broader structural factors (culture, markets, governance, and ecology) to perceptions and behaviors via individual experience, information, attitudes/beliefs, and values (Fig. 1) (Duram, 2000; Niles et al., 2013). These structural factors span the “regime” (i.e., dominant modes of production, sourcing, value accumulation and consumption in agricultural supply chains and existing scientific, policy, and technological paradigms) and the “landscape” (i.e., the external factors influencing the whole agricultural system, such as socio-technical trends, macroeconomics, or climate change) in a multi-level perspective of sustainability transitions (Geels, 2011). Applied to an agricultural innovation system, they directly shape the range of incentives and capabilities that farmers have to adopt a particular niche technology. Here we focus on how these structural factors influence farmers’ perceptions of their incentives and capabilities to adopt changes in technology and management.

2. Background 2.1. The role of perceptions in behavior Neoclassical economics assumes that individual behavior is rational. That is, individual agents make choices that maximize their utility. In reality, most people have only limited information, time, and processing ability and are forced to make decisions that are “bounded” by these limitations (Simon, 1955). Individuals rely on social learning as a substitute for extensive individual experimentation and experience. This process drives “attitude formation”, which is a concise form of decision-making whereby an individual considers only a few pieces of

2.2.1. Culture Factors such as laws, norms, ideologies and other socially-developed influences on behavior may be considered culture (Pannell et al., 2006). Cultural norms have a large effect on the perceived relative advantages or disadvantages of adopting new practices, and existing practices are often deeply culturally embedded (Pokorny et al., 2005; Hoelle, 2011; 842

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farmers to clear the land, particularly for cattle (Campari, 2005; Valentim and Vosti, 2005). Since 2004, the political environment in Brazil has changed, and has emphasized enforcement of forest protection policies (le Polain de Waroux et al., 2017), which is stimulating both pasture and cropland intensification (Valentim, 2015; zu Ermgassen et al., 2018). These changing governance structures may be increasing incentives for ICLS by shifting farmers’ perceptions of future land scarcity (Garrett et al., 2017b). But more broadly, the shift toward policies that support environmental protection could be promoting or discouraging more pro-environmental attitudes. 2.2.4. Ecology Here we use the concept of ecology in an agricultural context to include biotic factors (e.g. crop pests and pollinators, abiotic factors (e.g. terrain, climate, and soils), the overall complexity of the landscape as it transitions from agriculture to “non-crop habitat,” and the functional relationships among all of the components in an environment (Bianchi et al., 2006). These factors collectively impose limits on the types of plants and animals that will thrive in a given environment (Baker and Capel, 2011) and the range of possible behaviors considered by human individuals and groups (Kirch et al., 2004). For thousands of years, ecology has shaped food cultivation and harvesting strategies – leading to more diversified approaches in most regions (FAO, 2010), with specialization only occurring in a handful of floodplains. Initial differences in agricultural system characteristics driven by ecology, such as yield surplus (relative to labor inputs) and production variability have in turn influenced development pathways and sociopolitical dynamics, explaining the formation of different types of governments and value systems (Lincoln and Ladefoged, 2014; Scott, 2017). In the Amazon, traditional “agricultural” systems practiced by indigenous groups included diverse forms of “forest gardening”, as well as “black earth” creation to overcome the limitations of poor soil quality (German, 2003; Barlow et al., 2012). Farmers arriving from other parts of the country, following a different logic, instead took up slash and burn methods to offset the low nutrient content of the soils, resulting in a legacy of soil management techniques that only focused on fire usage and vegetation clearing (Fujisaka et al., 1996). This stands in stark contrast to a method of production based on regular usage of soil amendments, such as fertilizer and lime - a key feature of the ICLS system to intensify pastures. Production logics from the past persist, and these path dependencies influence possible alternatives for producers (Fuenfschilling and Truffer, 2014). Culture, markets, governance, and ecology thus condition the perception environment of producers and experts, both by influencing individual value systems and by shaping perceptions directly. In our hypothetical understanding of an individual farmer’s “mental causal model,” perceptions are the mediators between individual and structural factors and adoption outcomes (Corselius et al., 2003). These complicated interactions between individual agency and broad structural barriers shape the scope of perceived agricultural practices available to farmers, including technology adoption (Arbuckle and Roesch-McNally, 2015) (Fig. 1). Farmer perceptions and practices are also shaped by local agricultural experts, who influence the generation, aggregation, synthesis, and/or dissemination of knowledge within a particular place. In our model, we focus specifically on how expert and producer perceptions drive adoption decisions, while recognizing that the structural factors that influence perceptions can also directly influence adoption outcomes.

Fig. 1. How the perception environment influences adoption decisions. Structural and individual factors interact via networks, shaping the broader environment in which new practices or technologies are perceived by experts and producers. The dialogue among producers and experts further influences producers’ perceptions and their resulting behaviors. These individual behaviors and their outcomes collectively feed back into the perception environment, affecting structural and individual factors in the perception environment.

Gomes et al., 2012). In the Brazilian Amazon “cattle culture” has been found to obscure the low economic returns of cattle ranching by associating prestige with cattle ownership, helping explain its decades-long persistence (Hoelle, 2011; Garrett et al., 2017a). This phenomenon may also contribute to a reluctance to adopt alternative forms of ranching that involve cropping systems (Garrett et al., 2017c). Social support, outside information, and learning methods have a strong influence on whether a producer tests and/or eventually adopts an innovation (Pannell et al., 2006; Palis, 2006). 2.2.2. Markets A lack of financial capacity and difficulties in accessing credit linked to broader economic and political forces have a large influence on the feasibility of adopting new technologies (Gil et al., 2015; Latawiec et al., 2017). In the frontiers of Brazil, these variations in infrastructure conditions, and in particular the presence or absence of “agglomeration economies” (Marshall, 1890; Krugman, 1991), where a critical mass of agricultural firms located in close proximity facilitates competition and positive externalities for farming, can have a large impact on whether or not cropping systems can expand (Porter, 1996, 2000; Garrett et al., 2013). Yet, it is also possible that these infrastructural conditions can have an indirect impact on technology adoption by influencing perceptions of the costs and benefits of each practice. Specifically, the presence of a diverse and competitive cropping agribusiness environment in a cattle ranching hub may shape how often farmers interact with experts and exchange information on the potential benefits and feasibility of adopting ICLS. In diverse environments, sources of knowledge vary substantially (e.g. neighbors, input vendors, public extension agents) (Lubell et al., 2014). 2.2.3. Governance Governance structures and institutions can influence individual decision-making and adoption of agricultural practices and technologies (Marshall, 2009; Niles et al., 2013). Policy risks influence farmers’ overall risk perceptions and behaviors (Cassells and Meister, 2001; van Meijl et al., 2006; Niles et al., 2013). In Brazil, the National Integration Program during the military era encouraged farmers to integrate (colonize) the frontier so as not to hand it over to others, “integrar para não entregar” (Margarit, 2013). This was done through public resettlement programs and by providing substantial credit subsidies for

2.3. ICLS as a case study of sustainable agriculture intensification in the Brazilian Amazon ICLS take myriad forms in different regions, from grazing cattle on annual crop residues and cover crops to integrating sheep into perennial crop systems (e.g., orchards and vineyards) (Garrett et al., 2017b; Niles et al., 2018). Synergies from plant-animal diversification 843

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Fig. 2. Municipalities in the Brazilian Amazon where interviews were conducted.

and added agroecological complexity can lead to greater input efficiency, market and climate risk mitigation, and economies of scope (Carvalho et al., 2018). Specifically, ICLS promote beneficial interactions and outcomes via intercropping and rotations of plant and animal species, including maintenance of soil cover, nutrient cycling, carbon capture, and increased agrobiodiversity (Balbino et al., 2011). In the Brazilian Amazon, cattle production systems are generally extensive, characterized by low inputs, management intensity, and productivity, resulting in a high degree of pasture degradation and low incomes (Garrett et al., 2017a). The majority of cattle are finished on pasture, though semi-confinement systems are becoming more popular (BeefPoint, 2014; Rabobank, 2014). Current productivity of Brazilian cultivated pasturelands as measured in animal units per hectare is only 32–34% of its potential capacity (Strassburg et al., 2014). Given this situation, it may be possible to increase output on existing agricultural lands without converting remaining native ecosystems and allowing some pasture areas to re-grow natural vegetation (Cohn et al., 2014; Strassburg et al., 2014; IIS, 2015), even if global demand continues to increase. Improved daily weight gain in ICLS presents an opportunity to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with beef production, since cattle with lower average daily weight gain take longer to reach slaughter weight and emit more methane per unit of beef produced (Machado et al., 2001; Gouvello, 2010) and more carbon is sequestered in the soil via no-tillage ICLS than no-tillage alone or conventional tillage (Zanatta and Salton, 2010). Under ICLS, stocking rates in the Brazilian Amazon state of Mato Grosso could be increased from < 1 animal unit per hectare to 5.8 animal units under current climate conditions (Gil et al., 2018). This intensification results in large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and water use per unit of protein produced, without substantially increasing nitrogen emissions (Gil et al., 2018). ICLS in Brazil is promoted by the government’s low carbon agriculture (ABC) program, which provides subsidized loans for adoption of integrated systems, as well as other climate mitigation strategies (Observatório ABC, 2018). Despite this policy support and its potential

economic advantages, ICLS adoption in the Amazon is still far from widespread (Garrett et al., 2017c; Observatório ABC, 2017). In 2010 there were an estimated 1.5 million hectares of ICLS across the entire country (Balbino et al., 2011) and by 2016 there were 11.5 million hectares (Rede de Fomento ILPF, 2017), though these estimates are not definitive. This accounts for 4.75% of the total agricultural and pasture area (242 million hectares) in Brazil in 2016 (SEEG, 2018). Since the adoption of ICLS in Brazil occurs primarily in the context of highly extensive, low input cattle ranching, its implementation as a strategy to restore degraded pastures and obtain greater food production per unit of area generally involves an increase in external inputs to the farm. In particular, it involves an increase in soil amendments like fertilizers and lime, herbicides, seeds of crops (usually soy, corn and rice) and forage grasses, and the use of agricultural machinery and more skilled labor. In comparison to extensive ranching, managing an ICLS farm involves greater complexity and managerial intensity, higher upfront costs, and longer-term payoffs (Sulc and Tracy, 2007; Garrett et al., 2015; Gil et al., 2016). These attributes of ICLS make them particularly vulnerable to differences in perceptions. For most producers, ICLS represent not just a single additional technology like purchasing a tractor or giving their cattle a new vaccine, but a shift in the appearance, processes, products, finances, and vision of their farm. Producers may see increased management intensity as at odds with the value of ranching traditions or leisure time. They may see increased operational costs as burdensome if they do not also perceive benefits of economies of scope or improved inter-annual resilience to external shocks. Financial risk may be interpreted as untenable if market incentives or supportive government policies are not known, accessible, and/or desirable. These hypothesized barriers, especially related to economic costs, management burdens, and labor, echo those from an analysis of the development of mixed farming systems in Europe (EIPAGRI Focus Group, 2017). It is critical, then, to explore the perception environment around ICLS and other sustainable agricultural technologies to determine the extent to which factors in a given context are supportive or detrimental to forming positive adoption attitudes. 844

845

High - Pasture: 6.90 Mha (92%)

High - Pasture: 14.6 Mha (85%)

High – Pasture: 19.6 Mha (59%)

High - Pasture: 1.56 Mha (98%)

Extent of livestock (as % of agricultural area)

Low - Soy: 0.25 Mha (3%) - Corn: 0.13 Mha (2%)

Low - Soy: 0.43 Mha (3%) - Corn: 0.17 Mha (1%)

High - Soy: 9.1 Mha (27%) - Corn: 3.8 Mha (11%)

Low - Soy: 100 ha (< 1%) - Corn 36,000 ha (2%)

Extent of cropping (as % of agricultural area)

Low – Few public programs aimed at improving infrastructure or marketing for soy and corn.

Low - Few public programs aimed at improving infrastructure or marketing for soy and corn.

High - Supports agribusiness investments by deferring the interstate movement tax and investing ˜20% of state sales taxes for soy and cattle into infrastructure development - Seeks international investment in road development (Assembléia Legislativa do Estado de Mato Grosso, 2005).

Moderate - Has programs to lease silos and machinery. - Invests in public-private-community partnerships for integrated poultry, pork and fish production and industrial processing activities that provide a market for crops - Removed environmental licensing requirements for temporary agricultural cultivation and pasture reform (Meirelles, 2018)

Existing support for cropping

Notes: Data are from 2016. Mha indicates million hectares, ha indicates hectares (crop areas in Acre are listed in ha because they are an order of magnitude smaller than other states). Corn areas are listed for whichever harvest is larger – first or second crop for the year. In Acre and Para the first corn harvest is larger, while in Mato Grosso and Rondônia corn is primarily used as a second crop after soy. Soy and corn data are from IBGE (2006). Pasture data are from MAPBIOMAS (Project for Mapping Soil Land Cover and Land Use, http://mapbiomas.org/map#coverage). Qualitative rankings regarding the extent of livestock and cropping areas consider both the absolute area of pasture and cropland and its proportion of the total agricultural area (e.g. Mato Grosso has a very high absolute area in cropland, despite having only a moderate proportion). More details on the study regions are provided in the SI.

7.49 Mha

Rondônia

33.11 Mha

Mato Grosso

17.18 Mha

1.60 Mha

Acre

Pará

Total agricultural area

State

Table 1 Key attributes of the study regions.

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3. Methods

Table 3 Expert attributes.

3.1. Sampling Over the periods of August 2014, March 2015, August 2017, and March 2018, we conducted four rounds of detailed interviews across four Brazilian states including Acre, Mato Grosso, Pará, and Rondônia (Fig. 2). The distribution of farmer interviews was as follows (33% in 2014, 33% in 2015, 7% in 2017, and 27% in 2018), with very little difference in the proportion of adopters to non-adopters over each time period. These states were selected for three reasons: i) their representativeness of cattle ranching in the Brazilian Amazon, including the dominance of ranching as the primary land use, the pervasiveness of extensive (low-input) practices and the heterogeneity in actors involved, ii) diversity in their current levels of support for cropping; and iii) the diversity in state development strategies and policies (Table 1) (FGV, 2017; Garrett et al., 2017a; Latawiec et al., 2017; MapBiomas Project, 2017). These gradients across the four states likely yield different challenges, opportunities and incentives for adoption of ICLS, which may manifest in differences in perceptions of ICLS across regions. The time gap between rounds of visits was necessary to allow us to travel to all four regions, to identify more adopters than were available in the first period, and to seek clarification on key themes emerging from the first round of interviews. It also allowed us to see how ICLS diffusion evolved across the region. The technique of purposive snowball sampling was employed both as a necessity due to the low number of ICLS adopters relative to the total number of farmers in Brazil and as a strategy to obtain a crosssection of ICLS adopters and non-adopters in a variety of biophysical and socioeconomic settings. The initial set of interviews were conducted with farmers that were already known to Embrapa or identified by the local syndicate. We then asked these interviewees for additional names of farmers that had similar or different management and background profiles and continued to seek out interviewees until we had sampled farmers across a range of characteristics and heard largely repetitive themes from respondents. This method yielded a rich qualitative dataset of 64 interviews, including 33 interviews with farmers (accounting for a total of 536,527 ha) (Table 2) and 31 experts (Table 3).

Total # of interviewees State or federal research and extension Economic research institute University Consultant Producers’ cooperative or association Agribusiness

Acre Mato Grosso

Pará Rondônia Total

7 2 0 0 0 1 4

11 3 0 0 2 2 4

10 3 1 1 0 4 1

3 2 0 0 1 0 0

31 10 1 1 3 7 9

available to them to resolve those concerns, if ICLS was a potential alternative, and if better options existed. Following that we asked a series of questions about types of ICLS, barriers to and risks of adoption, and what technical assistance or policies and incentives, if any, would help them adopt ICLS. We also asked about their background, household, support and group memberships, land use and farm management, labor, credit access, and access to technical assistance to provide context for their farm concerns and thoughts on ICLS. Generally, each semistructured interview took the form of a conversation informed by the interviewee’s responses and farm observations. Each interview lasted three hours on average. To encourage more open conversations, interviews were not digitally recorded. Representatives from Embrapa were usually present, which was helpful in establishing trust with producers based on the long history of collaboration between Embrapa and producers. This situation also facilitated translation and clarification. It is possible that the presence of Embrapa representatives may have introduced some biases in farmers’ discussions of perceived barriers and benefits of ICLS adoption, especially vis-à-vis information access and because Embrapa has many research programs focused on supporting increased adoption of ICLS. Researchers took notes during the interviews and combined, compared, and organized these notes as soon as possible afterwards to ensure as much completeness and accuracy as possible under the circumstances. All notes were transcribed into digital text documents and checked against the originals. Once each interview had been cleaned and coded it was analyzed with QSR International's NVivo 11 Software. To minimize familiarity bias, coding was performed by a researcher who was not involved in the initial study design and only present for three of the interviews (Rajendran, 2001). The coding researcher used an iterative coding approach based on research team discussions and feedback on early themes from Brazilian producers and researchers. Responses were sorted into the five major categories of the questionnaire: General Farm-related Concerns, Benefits, Barriers, Policies, and

3.2. Interviews Interviews were conducted on farms or in agribusiness offices and guided by a set of open-ended questions approved by IRB/Human Subjects (Protocol #3918X). We began each interview by asking farmers to discuss their general concerns and challenges related to their farming enterprise. We then asked them to describe the alternatives Table 2 Farmer attributes.

Total # of interviewees Total area (ha) Whole farm size (median, ha) Pasture area (median, ha) Crop area (median, ha) ICLS area* (median, ha) (% of total area) Farmer age (median, years) Year first farm purchased (median) Most common region of origin Have off-farm income (%) Member of agricultural association or coop (%) Hold a leadership position (%)

Adopters

Non-adopters

Acre

Mato Grosso

Pará

Rondônia

Total

18 475,032 2,400 760 350

15 61,495 785 280 0

13 125,798 2,605 1,500 150

9 376,908 2,250 1,110 950

8 28,366 894 202 102

3 3,855 1,655 120 300

33 536,527 1900 605 175

220 13 56 1983 Southeast 50 76 56

NA

168 7 58 1983 Southeast 55 73 31

600 18 60 1992 South 25 50 38

102 16 55 1984 Southeast 33 57 25

300 18 51 1999 South 67 0 33

25 1.5 57 1986 Southeast 43 61 33

60 1989 South & Southeast 38 46 7

Notes: *For ICLS area we only include adopters in the state statistics. 846

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Information. To the extent possible without exact transcripts of the interviews, farmer perceptions are provided here as paraphrased translations from the original language to elaborate on important themes. For a detailed description of the coding method used, see Appendix I. 3.3. Subject characteristics The individuals we interviewed for this study included two groups: agricultural producers and local experts, the latter composed of researchers, agricultural input vendors, consultants, and representatives of producer cooperatives or syndicates. Some participants were interviewed as a part of both groups, due to their leadership positions in local agricultural associations. Though Embrapa and some large producers are experimenting with integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems, our study focused mainly on ICLS, since most adopters of integrated systems implement only the crop and livestock components and omit forestry (Vicente, 2016; Rede de Fomento ILPF, 2017). Our sample was biased toward larger, wealthier, and more wellconnected (in social, economic, political, and innovation communities) farmers and should not be interpreted as representative of the entire population of farmers in the study region. This is likely because of the way we found them, which was through Embrapa and agricultural syndicates. The farm sizes of our respondents ranged from 26 ha to 359,877 ha, with a median farm size of 1900 ha, which is larger than the average farm size in the Brazilian Amazon (76 ha for annual crops and 259 ha for livestock production in the North region (IBGE, 2006)). In general, the adopters we interviewed had larger farms, greater access to off-farm income, higher participation in agricultural groups, and more commonly held leadership positions in the community than nonadopters (Table 2). Most adopters were practicing integration on only a small part of their property – a median of 33% of their pasture area or 13% of their total area (220 ha). Over half of the interviewees (52%) had family involved in the farming enterprise and only 8% worried about having no successor. For 80% of respondents, farming was their primary income source, but 48% mentioned either themselves, their partner, or children having off-farm employment. The median age of our sample was 58 and, with the exception of one interview, all respondents were male. Adopters more often than not had migrated from the Southeastern part of Brazil, which has a long history of beef cattle ranching in addition to specialized commodity crop production. Nonadopters were generally from the Southeast and South, which is a more traditional cropping area, as well as dairy cattle and small livestock production. Most of the ICLS adopters started from a position of extensive ranching (Fig. 3) and 80% of the total interviewees (adopters and nonadopters) raised some livestock. Of those, 80% had beef cattle and 20% had dairy cattle. Only one of the adopters started as a crop farmer (we could not find any other examples) and raised cattle in a non-integrated system before adopting ICLS.

Fig. 3. Attributes of producers interviewed (n = 33). The x-axis indicates what farmers were originally producing before adopting an integrated system. For example, “livestock” indicates that they were producing livestock (beef or dairy cattle) before adopting crops (soy and/or corn) in an integrated system. “Both” indicates that a producer was raising livestock and growing crops in a non-integrated system. Areas are given in hectares (ha).

of action on regularizing property rights. One farmer in Mato Grosso stated, “I spent three years waiting to get an environmental license so I could build a silo – I’m still waiting.” A producer in Acre succinctly summed up these feelings, “People who don’t know anything about production are making rules that don’t make sense.” Concerns over property rights were particularly common in Pará and Acre, where many of the areas owned by farmers were originally public colonization projects. Land invasions and a lack of “legal security” were another concern reported in Acre and Rondônia, particularly in farms that spanned multiple states, since governance of land rights along these boundaries was weaker. Aside from markets and government policy, farmers consistently worried about labor for their farms. Several farmers expressed a desire for simpler, more flexible labor legislation. In general, larger farmers that participated in their local or federal agricultural associations expressed more concerns about the broader policy context when asked about their general farm-related concerns. Despite these political concerns and dramatic shifts in environmental governance, the larger farmers did not generally feel as if changes in the governance personally harmed them, as they were able to overcome them with legal support. Smaller, more isolated farmers often had little to say about issues beyond their farm, though some medium farms had struggled with environmental compliance issues in the past due to a lack of financial resources. Local experts were similarly focused on structural challenges but were more inclined to highlight market concerns, rather than government policy. They most frequently mentioned access to credit, price uncertainty, and supply chain and infrastructure gaps. A lack of infrastructure for cropping (poor secondary roads and a lack of machinery, silos, and grain traders) was a particularly pressing concern in Acre, Pará, and Rondônia. In Mato Grosso, where there is already a large concentration of soy and corn farming, more concerns revolved around the ranching component, in particular, a lack of competition among slaughterhouses due to consolidation by a few large companies. The challenge of market conditions was encapsulated by an extension representative who asserted that Brazilian producers “don’t have sufficient domestic consumption, so they have to export, but they don’t have enough infrastructure to export.” Experts also mentioned (agro-)ecological concerns that could impact crop production, like BT-resistant corn borer and glyphosate-resistant soy weeds. Agribusiness representatives in Pará and Mato Grosso were worried about growing land scarcity, saying that there was “not much more new area that is open and not already occupied”.

4. Results 4.1. General farm-related concerns The most commonly mentioned farm-related concerns were uncertainty about weather and markets, i.e., “the normal preoccupations of a farmer”. Reducing uncertainty and improving overall financial security to have “a calm, secure life; a better house with four rooms and a bathroom,” was a key objective. More specific to the context of Brazil, farmers worried about changes in government policies, particularly environmental regulations and interest rates, access to credit and insurance, labor and land issues, especially the landless peasants’ movement Movimento Sem Terra (MST), and the logistics of getting their products to markets. A more continuous sentiment through the four study periods was farmers’ concern about increasing environmental oversight and the lack 847

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4.2. Perceived benefits of ICLS

receive it, but don’t have enough documents.” One farmer mentioned that banks were unprepared to analyze the viability of an ICLS system to qualify an applicant for a loan from the ABC program, a problem confirmed by researchers at Embrapa. During the earlier set of interviews (2014–2015) local experts also tied low ICLS adoption rates to the low distribution of ABC loans and in turn to the low proportion of operations that had land title and had successfully registered their property in the environmental registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural)1 . By the second round of interviews (2017–2018) property registration was no longer thought to be a major issue, since most farmers had already registered, however ABC loan distribution for integration remained low (Observatório ABC, 2017). Various market constraints, including market access, prices, and competition, were seen by many farmers as barriers to adoption. Market access concerns included a perceived shortage of grain storage capacity, long transportation distances, and poor road conditions. Price concerns stemmed from perception of low domestic demand for higher quality/ environmentally sustainable beef, difficulty in competing with export markets, or a lack of cooperatives and syndicates to provide organization and leverage. Competition concerns stemmed from oligopoly in the beef sector. One local expert worried that they “don’t have enough slaughterhouses” in Mato Grosso. He reported that a “lack of competition allows the large slaughterhouses to control prices, leading to conflict with producers.” (Agro-)ecological concerns negatively impacted some farmers’ hopes for ICLS. Particular concerns were the timing of rainfall and poorly drained soils. One adopter mentioned that “only short-cycle soy works [in ICLS] to provide enough time and rainfall for the pasture phase.” Another worried that his area did not receive enough rainfall to support non-irrigated cropping. A producer in Acre described “losing 80% of the harvest some years due to clays causing delays.”, referring to the fact that the timing of rainfall was particularly challenging for harvesting on soils with low permeability. However, that had not stopped him from adopting ICLS. Despite the perception among a few farmers that ICLS was a laborsaving technology, almost half of respondents viewed the prevailing labor market as a challenge. Ranchers in particular felt that it was very difficult to find labor that was already trained to work with cattle and that the risks of training new labor were high due to high turnover. One rancher stated, “It’s very easy to find people to work with crops, but hard to find people to work with cattle. Cattle are much more complicated. People do not have the knowledge and it’s hard to train them.” Nevertheless, the importance of labor scarcity is clearly contentious, as producers in all four regions countered that the problem of finding and keeping skilled workers could be solved by “good treatment” (paying higher wages, giving permanent employees meat and a share in the revenues, and providing extra vacation time). Among both crop farmers and ranchers, as well as local experts, it was commonly agreed that the benefits from adopting ICLS were higher for ranchers than crop farmers. This disparity was seen to be particularly important in Mato Grosso where soy production is widespread and highly lucrative, and among farmers who were already doing specialized cropping. One researcher noted, “Farmers have a resistance [to ICLS] because production of cattle has lower profitability than crop production,” while another observed that “soy farming provides more or less double the profits of ranching.” Culture and knowledge also emerged as an important barrier, particularly among the older generation. In Mato Grosso and Pará, local experts spoke frequently about farmers “receptiveness” to new ideas, saying that “Cultural challenges limit what systems you can install on the farms.” These cultural attributes were mainly discussed by outsiders, speculating about the attributes of other farmers that were not in their

Producers and local experts across all four study regions described a range of market and ecological benefits of ICLS (Table 4). All but one of the adopters (17) mentioned benefits of ICLS, while less than half of non-adopters (6) did. Adopters were also more specific about the types of benefits they perceived and listed a wide range of benefits compared to non-adopters. Economic benefits focused on the ability of ICLS to address structural concerns associated with markets (a need to increase competitiveness in light of macroeconomic changes and regulatory pressure). Ecological benefits focused on the ability of ICLS to counteract low productivity due to pasture degradation (as described in Section 2.3). Ranchers that had adopted cropping often mentioned that ICLS would increase their farm income, mainly by increasing productivity. “ICLS helps us get more profit out of our existing area…especially in the dry season.” “ICLS helps you add value to your farm – you get three harvests instead of one or two”, in this case referring to the feasibility of sowing and harvesting two crops (soy and intercropping of corn and grass cultivars), followed by three months of pasture grazing with finishing steers (“boi safrinha”- a “third harvest of cattle”). One farmer stated that ICLS had “increased the productivity 10-fold from 0.4 head of cattle per hectare to 4.” In Pará some farmers saw ICLS as the only way that cattle ranching could survive as a livelihood and land use, “ICLS increases the productivity of the area because livestock is losing area to soy and without intensifying you can’t make a high living.” A few rare cases also mentioned the potential for ICLS adoption to reduce costs by providing an on-farm source of cattle supplementation and a means of increasing mechanization. Some farmers noted that the productive benefits of ICLS were more important than ever, given the changing regulatory conditions. A Mato Grosso adopter implied that ICLS helped them comply with environmental regulations to conserve natural forest on their property, by increasing their profitability on their already cleared area. Diversification was a benefit of ICLS mentioned by both producers and experts. By switching from a single animal or crop focus, farmers could reduce their exposure to price and weather fluctuations and associated risk, as well as help to spread out income flows throughout the year. One expert described ICLS as a “risk minimization strategy avoiding the boom and bust cycles of the past” that “generates more stability” and which “provides a diversity of income throughout the year.” “It is complementary, especially when one thing doesn’t produce.” Among producers who were concerned about climatic changes, it was common to think that integration would make them “more prepared for changes in climate and natural variations.” Another perceived benefit of diversification via ICLS among adopters was increased self-sufficiency for farmers who supplemented their cattle with grain during the dry season, particularly in Mato Grosso which experiences a long dry season, “[ICLS will] reduce reliance on markets.” However, several adopters and non-adopters mentioned that establishing a cropping system, particularly soy, is much riskier at the beginning than ranching since it involves high upfront costs and is very sensitive to markets and the timing of rainfall. 4.3. Perceived barriers to adopting ICLS By far the most common concern of producers was costs – either high upfront costs or uncertainty about return on investment. More non-adopters (10) than adopters (6) cited investment costs as a barrier, which seemed related to their lower access to off-farm income and credit. This was particularly the case in Acre where limited crop agribusiness deprived producers of credit from commodity traders and machinery vendors. Most were aware of special, subsidized credit for ICLS implementation through the ABC program, but were skeptical due to bureaucratic inefficiencies and land tenure or environmental registration requirements as reflected in comments like, “can actually get [ABC loans], but too much bureaucracy,” “too long of a wait”, and “tried to

1 The Cadastro Ambiental Rural became mandatory in 2014 and most Amazonian states are making progress. (Government of Brazil, 2018)

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Table 4 Summary of the perceptions of ICLS from farmers and experts. Perceived benefits

competitiveness • Increased productivity • Increased pasture • Improved income • Increased adaptability • Increased • Reduced risk

Perceived barriers

upfront costs • High of marketing options • Lack infrastructure • Poor credit access • Limited obtaining qualified labor • Difficulty profitability relative to alternatives • Uncertain regulatory environment • Unfavorable • Lifestyle preferences

Desired policy changes

transportation and supply chain infrastructure • Improved loans for ICLS • Expedited for agricultural labor training • Support for ecosystem services from ICLS • Payments land tenure • Improved • Improved access to targeted and relevant information, research and technical assistance

group (in terms of land use or their family’s region of origin), but not always. One interviewee from Mato Grosso, who was both a producer and a representative of the producers’ group, related the crop supply chain limitations to culture and land use legacies. “Mato Grosso has more industry because the market is so big and because farmers here are so receptive to technology and more entrepreneurial… It’s a cultural question – the crop farmers are from Europe: Italy and Germany.” One adopter claimed that “the major barrier is that people don’t believe integration will work, or haven’t seen enough.” Ranchers and experts believed that crop farmers lacked knowledge about cattle and were reluctant to work all year long because they “go on vacation for four months of the year.” Crop farmers and experts believed that many of the ranchers, who were originally madeireiros (loggers), possessed a “culture of extraction not cultivation” and are not in the habit of planning as far in advance as they would need to do to establish a successful cropping system. One rancher that had not adopted ICLS said that he was at an age where he felt “conservative” and wanted to “wait and see” instead of jumping into ICLS and yet another said that he wouldn't do ICLS himself because “he doesn’t have the conditions - no capital and no knowledge.” Some believed that these issues could be solved by farm succession. Several recent adopters in Acre that had always been ranchers mentioned that their newly trained, college-educated sons were interested in transitioning to a more business-oriented model involving ICLS. An agricultural technician in Rondônia observed, “You can have the father and the son’s farm right next to each other and the father’s farm will be terrible and the son’s farm will be beautiful. A different generation.” Conversely, local experts thought the lack of investment in improving pastures was exacerbated by the fact that many ranchers did have many off-farm activities – “The rancher, culturally, he normally has more than one source of income - many companies; the property is basic because he doesn’t need to worry about it.”

question stated that they did not want any government help at all, instead characterizing government actions as impediments or harmful. Two producers supported the idea of additional credit lines and quicker financing for small farmers, but said they were “not using them anyway” and wished the government would “stay out of the way.” Other farmers highlighted an exasperated middle ground saying that the “government needs to make it more clear which agenda [it] actually supports.” Farmers in Acre in particular worried that none of the taxes being generated from agriculture were being reinvested in the region. Local experts were less reticent to describe changes in government policies and market conditions that could help producers overcome barriers to adoption. Many overlapped with ideas from producers: better credit access, minimum prices, re-investing taxes, reducing taxes, and programs incentivizing “Pecuária Verde (Green Livestock)” such as a producer-led initiative in the state of Pará. This project, started in 2011, works with farms to increase profitability through improvements in productivity, animal welfare, land planning and restoration, and worker training, while also identifying barriers and suggesting supportive policies (Silva and Barreto, 2014). Some experts also mentioned improving market conditions such as investment in infrastructure and increasing government programs that offer market premiums for products that are consumed heavily in local markets, such as milk. 4.5. Information, research, and technical assistance Farmers were eager to talk about specific technical information that could be useful for ICLS adoption, such as grain and pasture varieties, locally-adapted Eucalyptus clones, selective herbicides, and animal nutrition and comfort, though large farmers were unlikely to see a lack of technical assistance as a barrier to adoption since they were comfortable obtaining information from a variety of sources (Fig. 4). One farmer stated that medium producers have the greatest information gap, since large producers can search for information on their own and

4.4. Desired policy changes When asked about the policies that would help them adopt ICLS, producers’ responses often veered into frustration over existing infrastructure and market conditions and improvements to this situation, rather than new incentives to help them adopt. Investment in roads and public grain storage topped the list of policy changes favored by producers. Especially producers in more remote regions, like Acre, favored strong investment in road infrastructure to enable them to get their products to market and compete with other parts of the country. Farmers were at pains to emphasize the importance of transportation: “Other things will take care of themselves if [we] have the right infrastructure.” Better prices for corn and high quality meat, more companies willing to provide credit contracts for livestock inputs, and payments for ecosystem services were seen as market factors that would encourage adoption. The importance of a federal insurance program to cover investment costs was mentioned several times by farmers as well. Some of these policy perceptions pertained as much or more to overarching farm concerns than to ICLS adoption. A fifth of those who responded to the policies and incentives

Fig. 4. Sources of technical assistance and information. Columns may add to more or less than 100% since each producer may have mentioned more than one source or none. 849

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small producers have public extension, but the medium producer “has nothing.” Local experts were more insistent on the importance of research and “more applied work” to enhance ICLS adoption. Eight experts, including Embrapa and university researchers, producer cooperative representatives, and a private consultant, talked about the need for “information about profits and how to actually do the systems.” A cooperative representative explained that disseminating that information would require policymakers to “improve the capacity of technical assistance [which] only exists on paper not in reality.” An Embrapa researcher and an input seller agreed that there was a gap between research and onfarm implementation, saying “Lots of research, but little technical assistance” and “Embrapa does research, but it doesn’t really get to the farmer.” Though agricultural input resellers, known as revendas in Brazil, often try to fill the gap in technical assistance, local experts complained that the quality of their assistance was low due to a lack of professionalism or expertise in ICLS. The areas that experts identified for more research included: cattle wellbeing, optimizing profits and allocation and management of soils, ICLS costs, fertilization, germplasm, management, productivity measurements, and plant health.

their existing lifestyle, even though it was generating low economic returns. Over time members of the “high status” group may influence the perceptions of the broader group (Henrich et al., 2001), but at the time of our interviews this transmission was still in the initial stages. However, market, governance, and cultural structural factors are likely reinforcing perceptions driven by individual factors. For example, the absence of agglomeration economies (a critical mass of related agribusiness enterprises) for cropping in many regions of the Amazon, has not only resulted in less competitive economic conditions for establishing soy and corn in regions dominated by cattle, but may have shaped the formation of perceptions that ICLS adoption is not going to be feasible until conditions rival more consolidated cropping environments. Long-term shifts in environmental governance in Brazil help explain farmers’ ambivalence to government support vis-à-vis ICLS adoption, despite concerns over existing market conditions. Throughout decades of strong government investment and subsidies for agricultural expansion, Brazilian cattle ranchers were socially valued as contributing to the development and security of the nation (Luna and Klein, 2006; Garrett and Rausch, 2016). Yet in recent years they have found themselves cast in a negative light as a result of agriculture’s connection with environmental issues in some reporting (e.g., Greenpeace International (2009)). While farmers tended to agree on the need for policies to improve credit access, prices, payments for ecosystem services and labor training that could help ICLS adoption, they were wary of any direct interventions. Instead they preferred government support in the way of improved infrastructure and land tenure and a more stable macroeconomic and political climate. In many Brazilian communities, both ranching and crop farming are deeply socially embedded due to multi-generational farming legacies within the regions from which farmers originally emigrated. The idea of segurança, translated literally from Portuguese as “security” is a recurring theme in conversations with Brazilian ranchers, including those involved in this analysis. Beyond “security”, segurança implies a sense of well-being more heavily influenced by non-monetary lifestyle attributes like safety, tranquility, and relationships with neighbors than by income associated with land use (Garrett et al., 2017a). Our analysis suggests that this cultural environment dampens the perceived net benefits of ICLS by promoting an aversion to higher managerial intensity (e.g., managing and training additional on-farm laborers, more complex timing of field operations), even if it leads to higher financial returns. (Agro-)ecology did not emerge as a factor that strongly shaped perceptions. Farmers noted that rainfall and soil characteristics could inhibit ICLS on certain parts of the farm, or reduce yields, but did not see these as overwhelming barriers to adoption. There was no mention of aversion to synthetic fertilizer inputs instead of fire usage and many farmers noted that starting fires was now illegal and thus something they no longer practiced. From the multi-level perspective, ICLS represents a niche innovation whose take-off and acceleration are dampened by structural elements in the current agricultural regime and landscape. Future research could ask whether a sufficient window of opportunity has opened in the existing regime to allow the ICLS innovation to accelerate and stabilize into a new agricultural regime and which landscape developments could create such an opportunity.

5. Discussion 5.1. The influence of structural factors on farmers’ perceptions of ICLS Throughout the world’s major commercial grazing regions, ICLS adoption remains low, despite a growing evidence base about its ecological and productive benefits (Garrett et al., 2017b). Prior statistical and policy analysis work has highlighted the relationship between structural factors and adoption levels (Franzluebbers et al., 2011; Ryschawy et al., 2012, 2013, Niles et al., 2013; Gil et al., 2016; Garrett et al., 2017c; Asai et al., 2018), yet few studies have explored the mechanisms underlying these relationships. The results presented here suggest that the effects of structural factors on adoption are sometimes direct (i.e., through impacts on productivity and profitability), but also indirect, by influencing farmers’ perceptions of the benefits of these systems in relation to existing practices, and barriers to their adoption. We found that the majority of farmers (adopters and non-adopters alike) are aware of the potential, theoretical economic and ecological benefits of ICLS, but many non-adopters have formed negative perceptions about the feasibility of adopting such systems due to prevailing market and governance conditions. The majority of adopters and roughly half of the non-adopters in our sample believed that ICLS could offer improved productivity and profitability in their region, particularly in light of declining soil fertility and shocks arising from changes in macroeconomic conditions and government policy. Yet non-adopters felt constrained in actually adopting ICLS because of the perception of unsupportive market and governance environments. In their opinion, lagging crop infrastructure (particularly outside Mato Grosso) and the absence of an effective training and extension system had resulted in commodity prices that were too low, input costs that were too high, and a labor market that was not sufficiently trained. Bureaucracy had left them with unresolved land tenure issues, long delays in acquiring necessary farm improvements and machinery, and difficulties in accessing loans to adopt ICLS. These perceptions may be driven by individual factors, such as a lack of personal experience or household financial conditions. Previous work has shown that farmers’ tend to overestimate costs and underestimate benefits when their individual knowledge of a sustainability practice is limited (Lubell et al., 2011). Farmers with large properties, more social connections, and leadership status in their community, who more often than not had already adopted ICLS, viewed ICLS as an opportunity to innovate and enhance their adaptability to market and governance conditions. In contrast, the more “traditional”, small to medium farmers, that are often more physically and socially disconnected from the city center, had a clearer preference for maintaining

5.2. Implications for land use trajectories in Brazil Despite decades of persistence, extensive ranching practices may be starting to give way to alternative trajectories – either intensifying production by adopting crops or leaving agriculture altogether. These changes are due to many of the structural changes in markets and governance perceived by farmers here, as well as the erosion of the cultural dominance of the existing system. Farmers now see viable alternatives being adopted by prominent farmers in their community and 850

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the next generation of farmers has a greater value for professionalism and good management. As summarized by an ICLS adopter in Rondônia,

Since many of the farmers had previous contact with Embrapa or the local syndicate, there is some inherent bias in the trajectory of the snowball sampling. However, generalized, statistical surveys of the prevalence and distribution of ICLS at the national level have not yet been carried out. Thus it was not possible to identify a random sample of producers. Our sample clearly represents more well-connected farmers, particularly among the sampled set of adopters. Understanding opportunities to diffuse ICLS to additional groups might be limited by differences in the social networks of adopters and non-adopters, since our work hinted that non-adopters seek information from other producers less frequently than adopters. Future work could assess the potential for enrollment of additional actors in the ICLS niche development process.

“You have the following options. 1) Maintain 0.5 animal units per hectare with a low income and simple life. This is what a majority of people are doing, but they won’t be doing it for long. 2) Sell the property. Many will do this. It depends on the location or topography. Almost always if you have a small property there is someone that will just absorb you; they are waiting. 3) Maximize the processes. For people who have a passion for the land and don’t want to lose it. To do this you will encounter the following challenges: High up-front costs, labor, climate, logistics, and the normal prices of being a pioneer (no help and no knowledge).”

6. Conclusion

Most of the structural factors that have shaped farmers’ perceptions of ICLS in the Brazilian Amazon are not unique to that technology. They likely influence the adoption environment for any land use and management strategy that is not already established in the region. Highvalue horticulture, aquaculture, fruits, managed forestry are other intensification options in Brazil with benefits for farm income and forest conservation (Garrett et al., 2017a). All would require supportive governance, adequate infrastructure, major shifts in lifestyle preferences and cultural values, as well as recognition of the long-run ecological benefits of adopting such practices. Though the farmers we interviewed were by no means at pains to list the potential benefits of ICLS, they pragmatically compare them with the tradeoffs of other alternatives for addressing climate and market uncertainty on their farm – they do not overwhelmingly see ICLS as the best option. Yet, the pragmatism about alternatives to ICLS and relatively low adoption rate are in line with the idea that adoption of a technology requiring substantial behavior change is more likely if the perceived advantages are high relative to existing systems (Reimer et al., 2012). To encourage further adoption of ICLS, it is clear that the national and state governments will need to improve access to cropping supply chain infrastructure by providing greater incentives for firms to locate in frontier areas, continuing to provide low interest loans for the purchase of machinery (particularly for small farmers and farming cooperatives), and co-financing grain storage infrastructure. Improved access to loans, including the existing ABC program, is also predicated on regularization of land tenure, particularly in Pará and Rondônia. Better rural training programs are needed to provide a labor force that is prepared to work in integrated systems and greater knowledge exchange between farmers and other stakeholders should be fostered through strong community programs, echoing the Pecuária Verde program in Pará. In the past these programs have often failed to reach smaller and more remote farmers, so in the future they should include demonstration events and partnerships with farmers in more public settlements far outside the city centers. Finally, though payments for the ecosystem services could provide more positive incentives for adoption, they are likely to be difficult to implement given concerns about land tenure and equity in the Brazilian Amazon, (Börner et al., 2010).

Intensification of pasture-based production systems is central to both improving livelihoods and reducing deforestation throughout the world, since low-productivity, low-income cattle ranches occupy a majority of the agricultural land area. In Brazil, ICLS present a promising opportunity in the array of possible agricultural intensification strategies because they have the potential to reclaim vast areas of degraded pastures while mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the previous research on ICLS, particularly in Brazil, has focused on agronomic and economic aspects from a traditional economic perspective. Here we examined local perspectives of ICLS to better illuminate what other concerns in addition to agronomic and economic outcomes might guide farmers’ decisions to adopt this and other agricultural intensification strategies. Building on prior work in bounded rationality and value-norm-belief theory we built a conceptual framework that emphasizes the importance of market, governance, cultural, and ecological structures in influencing the perception environment of Brazilian farmers and the adoption of ICLS. Our analysis reveals a gap in the focus of agricultural research in the Brazilian Amazon as it relates to the perceived needs of farmers. While much of existing research focuses on improving agronomic and economic farm outcomes and then disseminating this information, such outcomes and information are unlikely to result in favorable changes in sustainable agriculture adoption if structural barriers to adoption are not also addressed and if farmers are not convinced. Thus, it is critical that future research and development efforts in the Brazilian Amazon take a more holistic approach that integrates analysis of market, ecological, cultural, and governance factors and perceptions of those factors. In some cases, filling in relevant knowledge gaps related to these factors could be an effective focus for action. For example, if a credit process perceived as bureaucratic and costly is improved, but farmers are not made aware of those changes, they may remain disinclined to seek out those opportunities again. Making structural improvements where needed and accompanying those improvements with informational campaigns could be an effective strategy to encourage adoption of more sustainable agricultural practices. Funding This study was supported by the United States National Science Foundation Grant No. 1415352; the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard University; and the Italian Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea.

5.3. Limitations Our research design prioritized understanding the structural factors and personal experiences underlying perceptions and behavior. We did not assess the importance of additional individual factors that may also be very important for ICLS adoption, particularly as it moves toward wide-scale adoption. In the future, a survey approach that obtains detailed data on the backgrounds, conditions, and perceptions across a random sample of adopters and non-adopters in each region of the Amazon could be used in a hierarchical framework to assess the statistical determinants of differences in perceptions based on such individual factors (Halbrendt et al., 2014).

Declaration of interest None. Acknowledgements This work was made possible through cooperation with the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa). We want to 851

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thank two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments on a previous version.

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Appendix I. Interview Coding Method 1 Conducted interviews. 2 Consolidated and digitized notes to be machine readable. 3 Reviewed, cleaned, and checked notes for accuracy and understanding. a. e.g. If coding researcher encountered an abbreviation they didn’t understand, they would contact the co-authors to establish what it meant. 4 Imported interview notes in Microsoft Word text documents as “sources” into NVivo qualitative data analysis Software by QSR International. 5 Converted each “source” to a “case” to enable assignment of attributes to each “case.” In this description, an interview, source, and case may be considered equivalent. They simply have different names at each stage of the process. 6 Reviewed each case and “coded” farmer and expert responses to “nodes” which might be thought of as small categories. The idea is to code everything of interest in an interview case as one reads it from beginning to end, without worrying about trying to standardize these initial nodes or have sharp category boundaries. The same text can be coded to multiple nodes. Example nodes are shown below. i. Node: Difficult to access credit or capital for system implementation 1 From interview: “Credit – too long of a wait July-Jan, didn’t get money in time – has to sell cattle to get cash” ii. Node: Lack of market infrastructure 1 From interview: “Infrastructure. Thinks that if the gov did infrastructure wouldn’t need more direct supports.” 7 Once all cases had been coded and reviewed, similar nodes were grouped, and node names were improved to best reflect the interview content to which they referred. Each case was read at least a second time to check that its nodes were relevant and accurately marked based on the whole set of cases. 8 Nodes were sorted into the five major categories of the questionnaire: General Farm-related Concerns, Benefits, Barriers, Policies, and Information. 9 For each major category, the analyst looked at the nodes with the highest numbers of sources and secondly at those mentioned more frequently by each source (frequency of node in population, intensity of node in each interview) to determine the big picture. Then specific responses from farmers and experts were selected to provide context and detail for big picture themes. References Arbuckle, J.G., Roesch-McNally, G., 2015. Cover crop adoption in Iowa: the role of perceived practice characteristics. J. Soil Water Conserv. 70 (6), 418–429. Asai, M., Moraine, M., Ryschawy, J., de Wit, J., Hoshide, A.K., Martin, G., 2018. Critical factors for crop-livestock integration beyond the farm level: a cross-analysis of worldwide case studies. Land use policy 73 (April 2018), 184–194. Assembléia Legislativa do Estado de Mato Grosso, 2005. Lei No. 8432: Altera dispositivos da Lei no 7.263, de 27 de março de 2000, que criou o Fundo de Transporte e Habitação – FETHAB, cria o Fundo de Apoio à Cultura da Soja – FACS e o Fundo de Apoio à Bovinocultura de Corte – FABOV, e dá outras providências. Assunção, J., Bragança, A., Hemsley, P., 2013. High Productivity Agricultural Techniques in Brazil: Adoption Barriers and Potential Solutions. Baker, N.T., Capel, P.D., 2011. Environmental Factors That Influence the Location of Crop Agriculture in the Conterminous United States. S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report. Balbino, L.C., Barcellos, Ade O., Stone, L.F., 2011. Marco Referencial: Integração LavouraPecuária-Floresta (Reference Document: Crop-Livestock-Forestry Integration). Brasília, DF. Barbier, E.B., Hochard, J.P., 2016. Does land degradation increase poverty in developing countries? PLoS One 11 (5). Barlow, J., Gardner, T.A., Lees, A.C., Parry, L., Peres, C.A., 2012. How pristine are tropical forests? An ecological perspective on the pre-Columbian human footprint in Amazonia and implications for contemporary conservation. Biol. Conserv. 151 (1),

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