Crop protection

“Best bet” Land-use Systems

Country reports

Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn in Brazil

Agronomic Sustainability

Unique id: IDAV4SCE

Source file: D:\Projects\ASB\ASB Country and Thematic reports\Brazil country report\ASB Brazil Summary Report.xml

Authors: S. Vosti, C. L. Carpentier, J. Witcover, . Carvalho dos Santos, E. Muñoz Braz, J. Ferreira Valentim, S. J. de Magalhães de Oliveira, C. Palm, F. de Souza Moreira, A. Cattaneo, A. Gillison, A. Mansur Mendes, V. Rodrigues, T. C. de Araújo Gomes, M. V. Neves d’Oliveira, E. do Amaral, S. Fujisaka, C. Castilla, T. Tomich, D. Bignell, D. Gonçalves Cordeiro, A. Hermes Vieira, R.S. Correira da Costa, M. Faminow, M. Locatelli, M. Swift, S. Weise, M. van Noordwijk, N. Sampaio, I. L. Franke, H. J. Borges de Araujo, L. M. Rossi, E. Barros, B. Feigl, S.P. Huang, J. Cares, C. Pinho de Sá, . Carneiro, P. Woomer

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Attack by weeds, pests and diseases can be another important agronomic constraint to sustainable production. An attempt was made to identify potential crop protection problems; although no field observations were made. Assessments of whether or not weeds are or could become a major constraint in different LUS (in the absence of additional labour and/or technical inputs to combat them) were undertaken, based on the field experience of researchers and using the data from the above-ground biodiversity working group. A similar assessment was made for pest and disease problems, using the measurements of nematodes made by the below-ground biodiversity group.

Results

The results for the Brazil benchmark sites are presented in Tables 9, 10 and 11 and summarized in Table 12. The shading in Table 12 indicates those factors that pose little (light-grey), some (dark-grey) or severe (black) constraints to the agronomic sustainability of different LUS.

The first point to note is that forests, obviously, face no agronomic sustainability problems. Overall, the lowest variability (between maximum and minimum recorded values) in the indicators was observed for the forest plots, and the highest for annual crop and pasture systems.

Table 9. Indicators of soil structure

System	Site	Bulk density	Deficit C	Soil active carbon	Soil exposure
Forest	Theobroma	1.34	0.66	2.22	85
	RECA	1.08	0.94	2.26	?
	Pedro Peixoto	1.38	0.54	0.72	90
	Index	0	0	0	0
Fallow	Theobroma	1.13	0.74	2.22	92
	Theobroma	1.34	0.57	1.65	?
	Pedro Peixoto	1.12	0.82	0.58	95
	Index	0	-0.5	0	0
Agroforest	Ji-Paraná	1.02	0.56	1.33	45
	Ji-Paraná	1.18	0.63	0.96	35
	RECA	1.11	0.61	0.53	40
	Index	0	0	-0.5	-0.5
Pasture	Ji-Paraná	1.21	0.48	0.77	95
	Theobroma	1.30	0.58	2.23	?
	Pedro Peixoto	1.53	0.64	0.88	95
	Index	-1	0	0	0
Annual crops	Theobroma	1.24	0.69	1.87	15
	Theobroma	1.31	0.64	1.52	?
	Pedro Peixoto	1.17	0.72	0.57	?
	Index	-0.5	-0.5	-0.5	-1.0

Notes:

‘?’ indicates no conclusions could be drawn given available evidence and/or experience.

RECA is a cooperative located in western Rondônia that specialized in a specific agroforestry system.

Source: Working group document

Table 10. Indicators of soil biological health

System	Site	Mycorrhiza		Nitrogen-fixing bacteria
				Vigna	Other	Various
Forest	Theobroma	184 spores	8 species	0	-0.5	0
	RECA	130 spores	6 species	-1	-0.5	-0.5
	Pedro Peixoto	100 spores	7 species	0	-0.5	-0.5
	Index		0			-0.5
Fallow	Theobroma	120 spores	7 species	0	-0.5	0
	Theobroma	180 spores	8 species	0	-0.5	-0.5
	Pedro Peixoto	80 spores	5 species	0	-1	-0.5
	Index		0			-0.5
Agroforest	Ji-Paraná	40 spores	7 species	-1	-1	-0.5
	Ji-Paraná	110 spores	4 species	0	-0.5	-0.5
	RECA	40 spores	4 species	0	-0.5	0
	Index		-0.5			-1
Pasture	Ji-Paraná	91 spores	5 species	0	-0.5	-0.5
	Theobroma	427 spores	4 species	0	-0.5	0
	Pedro Peixoto	121 spores	5 species	0	0	0
	Index		-0.5			0
Annual crops	Theobroma	150 spores	6 species	0	-0.5	-0.5
	Theobroma	60 spores	5 species	-1	-0.5	0
	Pedro Peixoto	360 spores	8 species	-1