The paper provides historical and analytical perspectives for the assessment of the challenges and opportunities of cattle raising activities in the transition towards a lowcarbon agriculture in Brazil. It is organized as follows. The next section presents long run historical perspectives on the...

This study presents a preliminary estimate of user costs of forestland conversion for agricultural purposes for the period 1970-80 in Brazil. In this initial version, only loss in potential sustainable wood output is considered. However, the analytical framework adopted here can be extended to...

The extent of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon grew significantly in the last 20 years. Approximately 400,000 km2 of tropical forest were cleared from 1978 to 1998. Land conversion to pasture and crop areas were the main sources of deforestation, though the contribution of logging increased...