2.1. The Transformation of Cerrado and Expansion to the North
Until the 1960s, cattle herds were predominantly found in the South and Southeastern areas of Brazil, under extensive, low-input systems. In the late 1960s, public policies encouraged farmers to “conquer” the
Cerrado, a savanna-type vegetation typically found in Central Brazil. Agriculture began moving northwards, clearing land for cash crops like dryland rice and soybeans. With the advance of crops, machinery became available for sowing pastures. Palisade grasses from Africa were introduced in the early 1970s, along with Indian cattle (Zebu breeds), creating a favorable environment for cattle farming (Chaddad, 2015) [
7]. The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation – EMBRAPA, created in 1973, was strategic for developing tropical technologies adapted to Cerrado’s harsh conditions, which was later considered the Sustainable Tropical Agriculture Revolution of the 20
th century (Basso, Neves and Grossi-de-Sá, 2024) [
3].
Cash crops expanded further northwards, followed closely by cattle herds. Soybeans and maize, in particular, but also sugarcane and eucalyptus forestry became increasingly economically attractive in Central Brazil, especially in fertile soils, constantly pushing cattle farming to fringe areas. Consequently, traditional cattle farming regions, such as Southern and Southeastern Brazil, gradually saw a reduction in herd size and growth rates (McManus et al., 2016) [
6], while growth has remained robust in Northern Brazil. Our own analysis confirms this trend, showing a significant shift of herds from the central to the northern region of Brazil over the last 30 years (
Figure 1).
This shift can be attributed not only to lower land prices in the north and overall improvements in farming techniques, adapted to the Amazonian biome (Mores et al., 2022) [
8], but fundamentally to a significant increase in the regional demand for cattle products, like milk and beef, due to population and purchasing power growth, as Faminow (1996) [
9] highlighted. According to official data, the region's population surpassed 17 million inhabitants in 2022, with Pará, Amazonas, and Rondônia leading the ranking (IBGE, 2022) [
10]. Pará, Roraima and Acre are the major suppliers of the regional beef market (McManus et al., 2016) [
6]. More recently, cattle herds have been expanding into the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia, comprising the so-called “Matopiba”. This new agricultural frontier plays an important role in shifting the axis of current Brazilian agricultural production and will continue to do so in the coming decades (Mores et al., 2022) [
8].
Despite ongoing changes, Central Brazil remains a signicant cattle zone, with Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, and Mato Grosso states being particularly relevant (McManus et al., 2016) [
6], as illustrated in the map above (
Figure 1, year 2020). According to ABIEC (2023) [
2], in 2021, the North and Central regions held 20.2% and 35.4% of the cattle herd, respectively.
2.2. The Launch of Improved Tropical Forage and New Husbandry Practices
Grasslands are the primary land use in Brazil (21%), after land spared for conservation and indigenous peoples (40.7%) and for conservation within private farms (25.6%) (
Table 2). Brazilian beef is essentially grass-fed on extensive sown pasture systems. About 16% of the cattle slaughtered is finished on feedlots (ABIEC, 2023) [
2], usually only in the last three to four months prior to slaughter. While not the standard, these feedlots can be strategic for improving production and reducing externalities, as they can save a year of extra grazing and help to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by lowering the age at slaughter and, therefore, the total emissions per head.
Ninety percent of milk and beef production in Brazil is exclusively pasture-based (ABIEC, 2019) [
12], as the climate and land extension favor this strategy, resulting in one of the lowest beef costs in the world (Deblitz, 2023) [
13]. Pastures, therefore, play a strategic role in Brazilian beef competitiveness while also allowing for the use of least-prone agricultural land. The introduction of
Brachiaria grass, back in the 1970s, well adapted to Brazilian climate and soil, was one of the milestones in the development of livestock farming in the country.
Until 1985, natural grasslands were predominant along with low-input farming systems. About ten years later, they represented only 30% of total Brazilian pastures, mainly due to physical characteristics and cultural traditions (check Box 1). From the 1980s onwards, the collection of forage genetic resources in Brazil and Africa, and the selection process, based on their natural variability or through crossings, set the grounds for the Brazilian tropical forage development program, at Embrapa
2, which led to a substantial increase in animal production in the following decades (Valle et al., 2009) [
14]. Several forage cultivars have been launched and adopted in the most diverse production systems and biomes, including those of the genera:
Brachiaria,
Panicum,
Andropogon,
Stylosanthes, Arachis and
Cajanus.
Another milestone for beef farming was the introduction of Indian cattle, mainly Nellore, Guzera and Gyr breeds. Nellore (
Bos indicus) and its crosses became the main beef breed (Miszura et al., 2021) [
15], representing about 80% of the Brazilian herd. Nellore is extremely well-adapted to the country’s conditions (Baruselli et al., 2004; Lima et al., 2023) [
16,
17], notably for heat and parasite tolerance, while maintaining the capacity to efficiently use low-nutrition tropical forages. Genetic programs which started in the 1980s improved this performance through progressively shifting from empirical animal selection to fix racial characteristics to production efficiency (Euclides Filho, 2009) [
18]. As computational resources evolved, so did the genetic evaluation, with the pioneering initiative of Embrap working with sire models, at first, and then animal models. Nowadays, Embrapa-Geneplus Beef Breeding Program, Zebu Genetic Improvement Program (from Brazilian Zebu Breeders Association - ABCZ) and other breeding programs are increasingly incorporating genomic data and innovative selection criteria associated with carcass quality, sexual precocity, feed efficiency, and environmental impact (e.g., water intake, greenhouse gas emissions).
Nellore heifers, however, are late in their development and onset of puberty, with their first parturition occurring, on average, around 36 months, in contrast with 24 months by European breeds (
Bos taurus) (MISZURA et al., 2021) [
15]. The earlier the reproductive life starts, the greater is the females’ productivity (de LIMA et al., 2020; TERAKADO et al., 2015) [
19,
20], which is determinant for profitability in cow-calf operations, along with the birth rates. In this context, reproductive bio-techniques have been of particular importance for promoting sound reproduction management, given the prevalence of extensive farming systems in Brazil. Artificial insemination at detected estrus (AIE) and timed artificial insemination (TAI) are the primary tools used to increase production through introducing superior sires in commercial herds, including fertility-related ones. According to Asbia (2022) [
21], 23.5% of the 63 million beef cows are currently inseminated in Brazil, mostly with Zebu breeds. By large, TAI is the main method (98% of cases) and results in a 50% pregnancy rate, on average in each shoot (Nogueira et al., 2019) [
22]. The annual sales growth rate of synchronization protocols for TAI has been around 32%, in contrast with 6.7% for semen doses.
Other reproductive bio-techniques still face scaling challenges in Brazil.
In vitro embryo production (IVP) for embryo transfer (ET), sex-sorted semen, vitrification or freezing for direct transfer remain a niche market, mostly used in superior genetics herds. According to BARUSELLI et al. (2019) [
23], the challenges to increase the adoption of these biotechnologies include: lack of comprehensive understanding of productivity and economic benefits from using such technologies; insufficient number of specialists on the field; relatively low efficiency of AI and ET programs; research failing to assess reproduction within a systems approach; inadequate coordination of the supply chain compromising the communication and transfer of these technologies to farmers, among others. Bezerra et al. (2019) [
24] argue that these technologies are promising and eventually will reach commercial herds. Brazil is one of the largest producers of
in vitro-derived cattle embryos and is the leader of IVP embryos transfers of the world, holding a market share of 37%. The country has a high number of dedicated laboratories and a vast herd of
B. indicus cows, which are known for higher oocyte recovery, number of viable oocytes, and production of viable embryos than the
B. taurus cows (Pontes et al., 2010; Sales et al., 2015) [
25,
26].
Alongside the genetic improvement of cattle breeds, the progress of the nutrition industry has occurred, focusing primarily on the nutrition gap between nutrient poor soils and forage, and the increasing nutrient demand by genetically improved cattle. In the 1970s, mineral deficiencies in Brazilian soils were identified as one of the major reasons for mineral undernutrition-related diseases, commonly found in cattle (Sousa & Dirsie, 1985, Sousa et al., 1989, Tokarnia et al., 2000) [
27,
28,
29]. In the following decades, a consistent nutrition industry emerged across the country, promoting adequate mineral nutrition by developing and commercializing mineral mixtures that helped to tackle cattle deficiencies mainly of phosphorus, sodium, copper and zinc. It allowed for significant improvements in growth rate, carcass quality, fertility and health. Furthermore, a number of new nutritional strategies based on protein, energy and feed additives supplementation (Araújo et al., 2017) [
30] were developed and adopted, minimizing the performance loss in the dry season and, occasionally, improving it in the rainy season. With the expansion of Brazilian agriculture and the structuring of grain processing industry, larger amounts of cereals and co-products became available in the market (Silvestre & Millen, 2021) [
31], which favored the growth of feedlot operations that, today, finish about 7.6 million cattle (ABIEC, 2023) [
2]. Estimates of another 5 million head are also finished with high grain diets (e.g., 1.5% to 2% intake of the body weight in concentrates) while still grazing
3. As intensive and semi-intensive finishing systems are becoming more widely adopted, the carcass weight is increasing (ABIEC, 2023) [
2] and the age at slaughter is decreasing.
Such outstanding development of the Brazilian beef sector was only possible with the support from Public Policies, farmers’ private investments and better coordination of the supply chain. Between 1950s and 1990s, several public policies encouraged the occupation of Central Brazil through agriculture (Barbosa, Duarte and Staduto, 2021) [
32]. The farms’ profitability relied more on asset valuation due to inflation and herd/land expansion than on productivity (Stabile et al., 2023) [
33]. More recently, policies shifted to shape the future of Brazilian farming towards a sustainable intensification of the production systems. We present the two most influential policies below.
2.4. Sustainable Intensification: The Path to Brazilian Low Carbon Beef
According to Bolfe et al. (2024) [
43], approximately 110 million ha of pasture exhibit some level of degradation, representing about 60% of the total. Of these, 28 million ha are moderately or severely degraded but are situated on land suitable for crop production (
Figure 2).
The three levels of degradation - absent (not degraded), moderate and severe (LAPIG, 2022a; MAPBIOMAS, 2022b) [
44,
45] - are defined relative to ideal yields for each pasture species (DIAS-FILHO, 2015) [
46]. Pasture degradation primarily results from increasing grazing pressure and poor management, posing significant economic and environmental challenges. The higher the degradation level, the greater the recovery cost (Carlos et al., 2022) [
47], which can be prohibitive for some farmers.
In response, there is growing appeal for the sustainable intensification of Brazilian agriculture and beef farming in particular. Bolfe et al. (2024) [
43] argue that converting 28 million ha of degraded pasture, as encouraged by the National Programme for the Conversion of Degraded Pastures (MAPA, 2023) [
42], could increase the total crop area by 35%, compared to the 2022/2023 crop season. Alternatively, recovering 30 million ha of pasture for improved beef farming would require an investment of USD 8.6 billion and could yield returns ranging from USD 440 million to USD 6.7 billion, depending on various beef price scenarios (Carlos et al., 2022) [
47]. It is noteworthy that the development of beef farming also has spillover effects on regional prosperity, as evidenced by the Human Development Index (HDI) in a study by Lima et al. (2023) [
17].
Given the high costs associated with recovering degraded pastures, farmers may opt for crop-livestock integration (Bolfe et al., 2024; Sekaran et al., 2021) [
43,
44,
45,
46,
47,
48]. This approach, sometimes incorporating trees, is known as integrated crop-livestock-forest systems (ICLFS). ICLFS can enhance yields, food security (Sekaran et al., 2021) [
48], profitability, and reduce economic risks through production diversification (Cordeiro and Balbino, 2019) [
49] while also creating new income opportunities, such as payments for environmental services and carbon credits (Malafaia et al., 2019) [
50].
According to Rodrigues et al. (2023) [
51], based on a comprehensive literature review, ICLFS are low-carbon agriculture models that provide ecosystem services related to nutrient cycling, biodiversity and soil erosion control. These benefits arise from the synergistic effects of ICLFS components on space and/or time. Integrating trees into the system allows for an average carbon accumulation of 30 kg tree
-1 year
-1 (equivalent to sequestrating 110 kg of CO
2 tree
-1 year-
1) and enhances animal welfare by providing shade and shelter to cattle. Sekaran et al. (2021) [
48] also highlight the system's increased resilience under global warming compared to specialized farms. It is important to note that these models can be adapted to any biome, climate condition, farmer types and market, although limitations such as infrastructure deficits and low farmer access to technical assistance and credit can hinder adoption (Arango et al., 2020) [
52].
To encourage the adoption of good agricultural practices, including ICLFS, and to add value to beef, Embrapa has been developing beef farming protocols since 2005. Recently, concerns over beef GHG emissions have prompted the protocols to focus more specifically this issue. As a result, Embrapa developed the Carbon Neutral Brazilian Beef - CNBB (Alves et al., 2017; Lucchese-Cheung et al., 2021) [
53,
54] and the Low Carbon Brazilian Beef - LCBB (Almeida & Alves, 2020) [
55], both aimed at increasing productivity while neutralizing or reducing methane emissions, respectively, by improving pasture management and applying Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), with or without planted trees. However, due to institutional challenges, the uptake of CNBB remains low and LCBB is going to be launched in 2024.
Given Brazil’s renewed commitments to reduce GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 (UNFCCC, 2022) [
56], addressing the challenges of implementing the aforementioned policies, programs and protocols is crucial. Overcome barriers, including socio-psychological factors such as cultural resistance, infrastructural issues like the absence of paved roads, bridges and warehouses, and institutional obstacles such as limited access to technology, credit and technical assistance is essential for further adoption of low-carbon technologies.