Modelling Beef and Dairy Sectors’ Productivities and their Effects on Land Use Change in Brazil

This paper aims to develop new methodology for the Brazilian beef and dairy sectors incorporating different levels of productivities in the Brazilian Land Use Model (BLUM), analyzing land use dynamics. Several datasets combinations were used and supply and demand equations were re-estimated. Historical database developed in this paper shows that the livestock sector increased productivity levels per hectare (in both beef and dairy sectors), being an important land releaser for other agricultural uses. Even in frontier regions, the occupation process was followed by productivity increase. When technologies were implemented in BLUM, results show that there were significant differences on land use in 2030, reducing land for pasture compared to BLUM previous version. In this sense, the study concludes that: using average productivity levels on modeling can overestimate pastureland; migration between technologies (lower to higher levels) will continue in the future; and, finally, market and agents’ behavior changes might be incorporated in land use economic models, so they can reproduce empirical evidences.