AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION GAINS IN BRAZILIAN COMMODITY HOTSPOT: CASE STUDY STATE OF MATO GROSSO

The state of Mato Grosso leads the soybeans production in Brazil. In the last years is one of the world’s states fast moving agricultural frontiers. The goal of this work is to evaluate the expansion and intensification of agriculture and the consequences in forest and savanna areas in the state of Mato Grosso from 2001 to 2017, using satellite images time series. We observe the mainly agricultural areas in this state expanded 5.7 Mha, between 2001 and 2017. At the same period the natural vegetation had a drastic decrease, principality the savanna areas (7.4 Mha). When we divided the period studied between pre and post soy moratorium, we observe the soybean planted area, between 2001 and 2008, increased 2.6 Mha and forest decreased 6.9 Mha. In the post moratorium period, between 2009 and 2017, the soybean expanded 2.4 Mha, and the forest declined 0.21 Mha. With the data observed in this study it was verified the public policies such as the soybean moratorium have been effective in combating deforestation caused by agriculture.