Expansion of sunflower crop production in Brazil: a survey of future trends.

Sunflower cropped area in Brazil has been showing potential possibilities to be increased in a short period of time for biofuel production. Planning the activities is one of the requirements for the success of future cropped area expansion. This requires a previous survey that identifies future trends in the transformation and rearrangement of the sunflower agro-industry sector and also identifies technological needs that may affect this process. With the objectives of identify future trends and technological needs, a value production chain was built and a questionary was applied to agents of all the sectors participating at the V National Brazilian Symposium of Sunflower and at the XVII Sunflower National Research Meeting Network. The results pointed out a strong tendency for area expansion in the next two to five years (75%); being as a secondary follow-up crop (83%) specially after soybean and top be used for biofuel (77%). The main research needs were linked with disease control, crop zoning and varietal improvement for disease resistance and high oleic oil content. Also considering the vision of and concerns regarding the future expansion and transformation of the sunflower productive complex, it is believed that the expansion is a consolidated trend, requiring a strategic sector planning associated with an economic and technological police for its success within the Brazilian agribusiness.

Typologies and spatialization of agricultural production systems in Rondônia, Brazil: linking land use, socioeconomics and territorial configuration.

The current Amazon landscape consists of heterogeneous mosaics formed by interactions between the original forest and productive activities. Recognizing and quantifying the characteristics of these landscapes is essential for understanding agricultural production chains, assessing the impact of policies, and in planning future actions. Our main objective was to construct the regionalization of agricultural production for Rondônia State (Brazilian Amazon) at the municipal level. We adopted a decision tree approach, using land use maps derived from remote sensing data (PRODES and TerraClass) combined with socioeconomic data. The decision trees allowed us to allocate municipalities to one of five agricultural production systems: (i) coexistence of livestock production and intensive agriculture; (ii) semi-intensive beef and milk production; (iii) semi-intensive beef production; (iv) intensive beef and milk production, and; (v) intensive beef production. These production systems are, respectively, linked to mechanized agriculture (i), traditional cattle farming with low management, with (ii) or without (iii) a significant presence of dairy farming, and to more intensive livestock farming with (iv) or without (v) a significant presence of dairy farming. The municipalities and associated production systems were then characterized using a wide variety of quantitative metrics grouped into four dimensions: (i) agricultural production; (ii) economics; (iii) territorial configuration, and; (iv) social characteristics. We found that production systems linked to mechanized agriculture predominate in the south of the state, while intensive farming is mainly found in the center of the state. Semi-intensive livestock farming is mainly located close to the southwest frontier and in the north of the state, where human occupation of the territory is not fully consolidated. This distributional pattern reflects the origins of the agricultural production system of Rondônia. Moreover, the characterization of the production systems provides insights into the pattern of occupation of the Amazon and the socioeconomic consequences of continuing agricultural expansion.