Since the 2016 peace agreement a number of studies have argued that the withdrawal of the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) has increased land and tenancy speculation, natural resource extraction, and the expansion of the agricultural frontier 17, 18. Cattle ranching livestock systems still dominate the Amazonian foothills of Colombia 15, 16. A number of studies have also found these benefits will lead to increased financial resilience, as costs are reduced 12, 13, 14.ĭespite these benefits, SPS have not been widely adopted in key areas of the agricultural frontier in the Amazon. Livestock welfare benefits, in the form of limited livestock weight loss during the dry season, have also been identified which sustain milk and meat production when compared to similar systems which do not integrate silvopastoral approaches 9, 10, 11, 12. From a socio-economic perspective farmers also benefit from secondary forest products, such as lumber, food, medicines, and marketable fruits 7, 8. SPS can be less detrimental to ecological health by supporting biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and water quality 6. Generally, a SPS incorporates perennial trees and shrubs into pastures to reflect some of the ecosystem services provided by native forests while providing more consistent and higher quality forage to livestock 5. Silvopastoral systems (SPS) offer an alternative to conventional ranching systems 4. A reinforcing feedback cycle emerges from the coupling of poor physicochemical soil quality with unsustainable ranching that drives further degradation, eventually forcing farmers to abandon their unproductive land in search of native forest to colonise, thus restarting the degradation cycle 2, 3. Further understanding of the underlying antecedents of common factors, such as perceptions of silvopastoral systems, would reduce the risk of perverse policy outcomes.ĭeforestation and agricultural expansion endanger the functioning of the Amazon ecosystem and the livelihoods and wellbeing of the communities who live from this resource 1. The impact of managing increased market access and opportunities for SPS producers are crucial to avoiding additional deforestation. We find a number of factors which do not apply to this region and argue for a context specific approach. We provide a schema of associating factors for adoption of SPS based on past literature in tropical agriculture and apply this to a bespoke survey of 172 farms in the Caquetá region of the Colombian Amazon. SPS have been promoted for decades as an alternative livestock production system but widespread uptake has yet to be seen. Silvopastoral systems (SPS) support a transition to low carbon production if they intensify in sympathy with the needs of biophysical and socio-economic contexts. Current land use systems in the Amazon largely consist of extensive conventional productivist livestock operations that drive deforestation.
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