Assessing the impact of the ABC Cerrado Project

Abstract

Projects that help rural producers to use sustainable production practices are essential for the preservation of biomes. The ABC Cerrado Project, for example, aimed to promote the sustainable land use, as well as to improve the forest management, in the Cerrado (Brazilian Savanna) biome, from 2014 to 2019. The Project’s goals included assessing the impact resulting from training a group of farmers in sustainable technologies for agricultural production and offering them technical assistance for managing rural properties. In this study, the impact of this Project was evaluated. The perception of impact adopted here has three dimensions: technical efficiency; probability of the activity being a carbon sink; and reduction of carbon emissions. In general, there was an improvement in the environmental performance of farms assisted by the Project. This reflects the efforts of the farmers to adjust their production processes and incorporate the good agricultural practices disseminated by the technology transfer process proposed by the Project.

Keywords

• sustainable land use
• forest management
• greenhouse gas emissions balance
• soil carbon stocks