Sustainability of sugarcane production in Brazil. A review
Ricardo de Oliveira Bordonal,João Luís Nunes Carvalho,Rattan Lal,Eduardo Barretto de Figueiredo,Bruna Gonçalves de Oliveira,Newton La Scala +5 more
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TLDR
In this article, a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-knowledge and the main advances made thus far in the sugarcane sector is presented, where the authors review the major environmental impacts of rapidly expanding sugarcANE plantations on the land use change and its competition with food production, as well as those associated with sugarcaine cultivation in Brazil.Abstract:
Brazil is a major sugarcane producer and its production more than doubled over the last decades to meet global bioenergy demands for reducing crude oil dependency and mitigating climate change. Nevertheless, the adverse effects of this growth on jeopardizing the sustainability of sugarcane production are not known, especially when environmental impacts of agricultural inputs and production processes are not judiciously managed. This article is a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-knowledge and the main advances made thus far in the sugarcane sector. Here, we review the major environmental impacts of rapidly expanding sugarcane plantation on the land use change and its competition with food production, as well as those associated with sugarcane cultivation in Brazil. Our main finding are that sugarcane plantation did not contribute to direct deforestation, and its expansion on degraded pastures with the attendant increased yields of food crops and livestock intensification decreased land competition between food and sugarcane. Non-burning sugarcane harvesting is a win-win strategy because of its benefits involving agronomic and environmental aspects, but soil compaction is among the main issues in sugarcane cropping systems. Sugarcane is highly efficient in terms of nitrogen use efficiency, which is an important factor for its high energy balance. But, special attention should be given regarding emissions of nitrous oxide when straw mulching is combined with application of nitrogen fertilizer and vinasse. Recent advances in the sugarcane sector also show significant reductions in water consumption, making sugarcane ethanol one of the most favorable options in terms of water footprint. Growing realization of a vast potential indicates the need to further enhance the environmental benefits of sugarcane ethanol by optimizing the agricultural production chain. Based on this improved knowledge, the adoption of best management practices is among researchable priorities that can be developed to consolidate the large potential of sugarcane production towards greater sustainability.read more
Citations
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Strategies to improve the productivity, product diversity and profitability of urban agriculture
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Soil physical quality response to sugarcane straw removal in Brazil: A multi-approach assessment
Guilherme Adalberto Ferreira Castioni,Maurício Roberto Cherubin,Lauren Maine Santos Menandro,Guilherme Martineli Sanches,Ricardo de Oliveira Bordonal,Leandro Carneiro Barbosa,Henrique Coutinho Junqueira Franco,João Luís Nunes Carvalho +7 more
TL;DR: In this article, a long-term field experiment was carried out to evaluate the effects of sugarcane straw removal on soil physical quality in southern Brazil, and the VESS method was able to detect the changes in soil structural quality, and VESS scores averaged 4.5 and 3.9 for the TR and HR plots respectively, thus revealing signals of severe structural degradation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Sugarcane yield and soil carbon response to straw removal in south-central Brazil
Ricardo de Oliveira Bordonal,Lauren Maine Santos Menandro,Leandro Carneiro Barbosa,Rattan Lal,Débora Marcondes Bastos Pereira Milori,Oriel Tiago Kölln,Henrique Coutinho Junqueira Franco,João Luís Nunes Carvalho +7 more
TL;DR: In this article, the effects of straw removal on sugarcane yields, organic carbon stocks and the degree of soil organic matter humification under three diverse edaphoclimatic conditions (Quirinopolis-GO, Chapadao do Ceu-GO and Quata-SP) were investigated.
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Soil variability and quantification based on Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 bare soil images: A comparison
Nélida Elizabet Quiñonez Silvero,José Alexandre Melo Demattê,Merilyn Taynara Accorsi Amorim,Natasha Valadares dos Santos,Rodnei Rizzo,José Lucas Safanelli,Raúl Roberto Poppiel,Wanderson de Sousa Mendes,Benito Roberto Bonfatti +8 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluated how satellite images at different resolutions (spatial, spectral and temporal) can influence the representation of soil variability over time, the percentage of bare soil areas and spatial predictions of soil properties in southeastern Brazil.
References
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David Tilman,Kenneth G. Cassman,Pamela A. Matson,Pamela A. Matson,Rosamond L. Naylor,Stephen Polasky +5 more
TL;DR: A doubling in global food demand projected for the next 50 years poses huge challenges for the sustainability both of food production and of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and the services they provide to society.
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TL;DR: This article found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubled greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increased greenhouse gases for 167 years, by using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change.
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Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt
TL;DR: Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food crop–based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a “biofuel carbon debt” by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas reductions that these biofuel reductions would provide by displacing fossil fuels.
Supporting Online Material for: Ethanol Can Contribute To Energy and Environmental Goals
TL;DR: This article evaluated six representative analyses of fuel ethanol and found that current corn ethanol technologies are much less petroleum-intensive than gasoline but have greenhouse gas emissions similar to those of gasoline, and that large-scale use of ethanol for fuel will almost certainly require cellulosic technology.
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Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals
Alexander E. Farrell,Richard J. Plevin,Brian T. Turner,Andrew D. Jones,Michael O'Hare,Daniel M. Kammen +5 more
TL;DR: It is already clear that large-scale use of ethanol for fuel will almost certainly require cellulosic technology and new metrics that measure specific resource inputs are developed, but further research into environmental metrics is needed.
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