Farming and land use changes in Cerrado biome: the case of East Maranhão – Brazil (1985/2018)

This paper analyzed the reasons for land use changes in Caxias, East Maranhão, in the Northeast region of Brazil, between 1985 and 2018. The analyzed region is in MATOPIBA, which includes the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, part of the Cerrado and also known as the last agricultural frontier. Remote sensing using MapBioma to detect the location of forest lands and farming fields was applied combined with IBGE database about the agricultural production. Additionally, the application of questionnaires and interviews with regional soybean farmers and stakeholders was used to obtain additional empirical information. The following four categories probably responsible for those land use changes were analyzed: (1) infrastructure/investments in facilities, (2) environment/availability of natural cover for agriculture, (3) economy/entrance of global agribusiness companies; and (4) demography/number of smallholder ́s properties. Even though soy production has increased significantly in Maranhão, due to large investments in infrastructure and IT, the main responsible for deforestation and changes in land cover in the Caxias region has been pasture and cattle breeding. Tight environmental procedures and strong difficulties to acquire large areas of suitable land for high-tech commodity production have been the main obstacles for more significant advances of soybean production in Caxias. Thus, protection of forests, multitask agricultural activities, sustainable cattle breeding and soy production as part of a global supply chain should be harmonized in order to guarantee well-balanced co-existing and development.

1 Financial support given by the Coordination for the Improvement of Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), administrative support granted by Universidade Federal do Tocantins (PGDR/UFT) and the Instituto Federal do Maranhão (IFMA) and the technical advice by Dr. Rodolfo Alves da Luz (UFT/Porto Nacional).

Introduction
Farming is the main cause of land use and changes in tropical countries (KONG et al., 2018). In Brazil, the replacement of natural cover into agricultural fields is linked to the soybean complex advance, the most noteworthy national rural production (BRASIL, 2019b;ARAÚJO et al., 2019). In the MATOPIBA region, agricultural sprawl led to a robustly rural-urban association based on agricultural industry and new trade partners (ELIAS, 2017;. This development is notably as its context differs from the evolution of some European countries such as Portugal and Sweden, where most of the rural properties were sold for real estate development or abandoned by their owners, resulting in degeneration of those areas (ABRAMSON; HAGBERG, 2018;GOMES et al., 2018).
In Maranhão, a state in the Brazilian Northeast, grain, specially soybeans, expanded in the southern zone (DORNER et al., 2019). Previously, particularly between the 18th and 20th century, the farmlands were concentrated in the central and eastern zones, dedicated to the cultivation of cotton (Figure 1). Nevertheless, insufficient credits and lack of investments in infrastructure and technology weakened the activity. This scenario differs from the current situation of soybean production, strongly supported by national and multinational companies and marked by   (1775-1970) and soybean (1980-2017) production in the state of Maranhão, Brazil.
Recently, soybean fields have advanced into previously cotton areas, mainly in the municipality of Caxias (Figure 1), earlier an important center of production and commercialization of this culture and located near to two subregions 5 with significant soybean production: Chapadinha, in the northeast, and Colinas, in the southeast. In this area, soybean yields increased by 31% between 2010 and 2017 (BRASIL, 2019a). As there is spare empiric evidence about the reasons for changes in land use and agricultural production in the East Maranhão, we decided to undertake further investigation and respond if soybean has become the leading agricultural activity in this area, previously dominated by cotton. 5 The regions and subregions used in this work are official references prepared by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

Research area and proceedings
The Region of Caxias, which includes three subregions, Codó, Caxias and Timon (  The following methods have been applied to investigate possible changes in land use and agricultural production in Eastern Maranhão between 1985 and 2018, a period in which most of the regional agrarian production transformations took place: (1) remote sensing available from MapBioma to detect the location of forest lands and farming fields; (2) Agricultural production framework and (3) field research through the perceptions of regional soybean farmers and other stakeholders, to identify probable causes that may explain the results obtained in the first two topics.

Land use classification and data collection
MapBioma is part of the Climate Observatory, which purposes constant mapping of Brazil's land use and detects any land cover changes through Landsat multispectral scanner (MAPBIOMA, 2019). The images were acquired from the Google Earth Engine site for six single years: 1985, 1995, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2018, including (table 1).    (1985, 1995, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2018) Geostatistic Geographic illustration

Land use and farming production analysis
Total forest cover in the East Maranhão decreased during each year of the investigation as shown in figure 3, even though such reduction was not that severe between 1985 and 2018.
There is still considerable land extension fully preserved, but pasture has advanced significantly and become the main responsible for deforestation in the region. Meanwhile, since 2005, agriculture as well has expanded in a large scale. Together, both activities have contributed for most of the transformations occurred, primarily on the southern and northeastern borders.
Apparently, sprawl of current production and introduction of new crops have led to more intense land use all over East Maranhão in the current century. However, as it cannot be assured if the magenta points in figure 3, which characterize agriculture, match with the advance of soybeans crops in this area of study, more empirical evidence is required to determine if soybean production has been responsible for such transformations or not.  Another concerning figure is the increase of savanna formation by 7% in the same period, known as "savannization," a process in which dense woodlands are being replaced by poorer biodiversity biomes. Previously, primary regional agricultural production was characterized by rice, and corn, representing 38 and 25% of the total production in 2005. In the following years, rice production decreased lightly and dropped to 28% whereas corn maintained its performance and soybeans increased its participation significantly from 2005 to 2018, with a share of almost 18% (figure 5). China has reached significant increase. However, insufficient road maintenance has been mentioned as major threat to grain logistics from yields to port.
According to producers, another important factor of infrastructure has been the advance of Information Technology (IT) enabling them to install wireless local area network (WLAN) on their properties, even on remote areas, and obtain benefits from fast track internet. At this stage, they are fully connected to international database and enabled to acquire any information on time, as well as to be permanently linked to suppliers and traders, reducing their transaction cost significantly. Moreover, the formation of producers in WhatsApp groups, has permitted better organization among each other and faster and more efficient exchange of mutual experiences.
IT has become a crucial element to promote soybean production in the East Maranhão.
The second category, environment, mentioned in figure 4 revealed as a main factor the vast availability of natural lands, still covering half of the area of study in 2018. However, according to the interviewed agents, the transformation of forests into agriculture lands has not been simple. Licenses for deforestation, issued by SEMA, the environmental agency of Maranhão state, are subject to very bureaucratic procedures resulting in extreme delays in approval or nonapproval of requirements. Consequently, the lack of legal security exacerbates planning and cash-flow of soybean producers. This scenario differs from the 1970s and 1980s, a period of noneffective government control to reduce deforestation.
Until 2000, online monitoring of deforestation through accurate satellite images was unavailable and local inspection very rare, allowing rural producers to use the original cover nearly unrestrictedly. Nowadays, however, agricultural producers face heavy fines in case of deforestation without the environmental agency's authorization. Such document needs to be renewed every four years. Furthermore, Brazilian environmental laws require to conserve at least 20% of total property with original Cerrado biome. Nevertheless, a considerable loss of forest formation between 2015 and 2018 can be stated as indicated in figures 3 and 4.
The third category, economy, characterized by the entrance of major global agribusiness players in the 1990's, according to the interviewed producers, has pushed them to become highly professional, with large investments in technology and workforce to keep competitive and to sustain their position in a tight contractual system as part of a global supply chain.
Such high investments require quick and easy access to loans at low interest rates, mainly granted in a large scale by main global agribusiness players acting in Maranhão. Very often, this has caused financial dependency on international companies, as payback uses to occur by long term soybean supplying contracts, or even, in isolated cases, in case of default, to the loss of some properties.
Regional stakeholders recognize the difficulty of operating in the global commodity markets and expect that this business will become even more challenging in the next decades.
Thus, farmers who own land in the Caxias Region seem not to be very interested in cultivating grain on a large scale. Landowners are usually native and more interested in keeping traditional activities such as extensive cattle breeding, whereas the classic soybean producers are generally native from the South of Brazil. As a result, only one single soybean producer succeeded to settle in the examined region. However, in the long term, agriculture in Caxias is also subject to high tech husbandry and should replace traditional activities.
With reference to the fourth category, demography and its main factor, the area hosts 115 villages and rural settlements and a considerable number of smallholders, representing a strong restriction to the expansion of soybean production, as such high-tech activity demands vast and plain properties to achieve economies of scale. Thus, it seems to be nearly unlikely for investors to become large estate due to extreme elevated transaction cost caused by thousands of spread smallholders.
Therefore, native landowners probably prefer to continue investing in traditional agricultural activities or cattle breeding, rather than to deforest and plant soybeans.

Another limitation to agricultural expansion is the existence of Environmental Protection
Areas (APAs), where intensive land use is prohibited. East Maranhão hosts the APA Morro Garapense, with an extension of 375,000 hectars. Its main function is to keep native forests and protect traditional quilombolas and indigenous communities.
According to the results, we identified probable categories and factors to explain the advance of soybean production between 2015 and 2018. The building of facilities such as TEGRAM and the modernization of IT improved infrastructure and made the relationship between grain producers and other trade partners more efficient. Such interactions are absolutely necessary to incorporate East Maranhão into the global commodity market. However, the one hand, the entry of main global agribusiness players contributed to more professionalism in the region, but, on the other, the extreme demand for high-tech and management skills seemed to have discouraged many local rural producers.
Actually, the difficulties to obtain permission for deforestation and the complexity to negotiate with traditional smallholders may considered to be the major obstacles for more soybean production in the area. Previously, between 1995 and 2005, slack environmental regulation, permitted vast deforestation and transformation into wide areas of pasture with cattle breeding, very often without any concern about economic viability.

Conclusions
Soybean production has not become the main activity in East Maranhão the same way it happened to cotton between 1775 and 1970. Agriculture in East Maranhão is responsible for less than 1% of total area. Forest and savannah have remained the most important soil use, totaling nearly 88%, nevertheless, whereas the first has but reduced its participation between 1985 and 2018 from 65% to 52%, the latter has increased from 25% to 36%, revealing a tendency of deforestation and savannazation. Pasture continues the main economic activity increased its participation of soil use from 5% to 10%.
The expansion of soybeans has been hampered by an elevated number of small properties and environmental restrictions which have not permitted the takeover of vast land for high-tech production and permission for deforestation. The main challenge may consider a consensus among the protecting of areas with original cover and traditional communities, and the creation of competitive regional agricultural production of commodities as part of global supply chains.
Hence, a probable framework with multitasked farming activities, on the contrary to monoculture, which seemed to become dominant in Brazilian rural regions, should be prioritized.
Mapbioma has proved to be an excellent tool to investigate land use in the Cerrado. The research should be expanded to other areas of MATOPIBA in order to reveal deforestation and savannization. Sustainable agriculture means production of commodities, important for Brazilian trade balance, in accordance with the preservation of existing natural vegetation and reforestation of degenerated areas 8 .