14CONFAP: Implications of enhanced ecological intensification and resilience for smallholder farming in the eastern Amazonia region

The former 'arc of deforestation' of peripheral Amazonia is dominated by extensive pastures and slash-and-burn shifting cultivation. These land management interventions have resulted in severe environmental degradation, restricted agricultural productivity and caused rural poverty. As populations continue to rise, there is a clear need for a more ecologically sustainable intensification of smallholder agriculture with high eco-efficiency and low external inputs. This project aims to create a new research partnership to tackle biodiversity and ecosystems resilience and assess the impacts of ecological intensification (more productive, reduced input sustainable systems) on smallholder farming at the eastern fringe of Amazonia. We will focus on four key priority areas namely: i) landscape ecology; ii) soil carbon and nutrient management; iii) global change biology and iv) conservation and biodiversity.

i) Landscape ecology: Ecological intensification of agriculture requires an appreciation of how ecosystem processes at the landscape-scale can be integrated with existing smallholder farming systems, priorities and constraints. Key questions that need to be addressed include: 1) how should forests be managed to deliver optimal livelihood and environmental benefits? and 2) how can we ensure that forest management at the interface with neighbouring farming systems is sustainable and not over-exploited by farming communities?
ii) Carbon and nutrients
Traditional smallholder farming relies on low input strategies and future efforts must strive to increase resilience to minimize external risks. Sustainable low-input agriculture is difficult to achieve in the humid tropics, due to a combination of factors that reduce nutrient-efficiencies of crops. Key questions to be considered include: 1) how does smallholder land management impact on soil quality and 2) how can soils best be restored?
iii) Global change biology
Global changes at field, regional and global scales are transforming agriculture and socio-economics and we urgently require a better understanding of the processes and patterns involved. The key questions to be addressed here are: 1) to what extent can crop management mitigate against environment change-related stresses such as droughts, flooding? and 2) what is the short- and long-term effect of salinity intrusions into freshwater wetlands?
iv) Conservation and use of biodiversity
Biodiversity is essential to the sustainable management of ecosystems. Key questions to include: 1) how might forest wastes benefit farming systems; and 4) how does biodiversity provide more resilience to agricultural landscapes to cope with extreme events?

This project aims to create a new research partnership to tackle biodiversity and ecosystems resilience and impacts of ecological intensification (more productive, reduced input sustainable systems) on smallholder farming at the eastern fringe of Amazonia. The former 'arc of deforestation' of peripheral Amazonia is dominated by extensive pastures and slash-and-burn shifting cultivation. These land management interventions have resulted in severe environmental degradation, restricted agricultural productivity and caused rural poverty. This project will focus on 4 key areas that cut across the food-water-energy and environment nexus namely: i) landscape ecology; ii) soil carbon and nutrient management; iii) global change biology and iv) conservation and biodiversity. We will tackle these important areas in four workshops; each addressing a single theme while recognizing overall synergies and inter-linkages between them. The project will kick off in February with the first workshop in Maranhão which will include site visits to enable the UK team to contextualise the nature of the key agri-environmental issues in the region. The second workshop will take place in Nottingham in May with field excursions to explore riparian, wetland, ancient and modern woodland/forest ecosystems to enable existing policy and practice to be shared. The third workshop in Maranhão will follow a similar pattern and will include PhD students from the UK travelling to Brazil. The final workshop in November in Nottingham will also consider the project outcomes as a whole and seek to develop a roadmap for future collaboration and funding in this area. To add value to the programme the workshops will not focus exclusively on the project team, but will be opened up to relevant academics and stakeholders from other institutes and disciplines in the hosting country.

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