DOI: 10.5061/dryad.ksn02v740
title: Degraded pastures: technical efficiency, stocking rates, pasture allocation and rural credit data

description: Degraded pasture is a major liability in Brazilian agriculture, but
 restoration and recovery efforts could turn this area into a new frontier
 to both agricultural yield expansion and forest restoration. Currently,
 rural properties with larger degraded pasture areas are associated with
 higher levels of technical inefficiency in Brazil. The recovery of 12
 million ha of degraded pastures could generate an additional production of
 17.7 million bovines while reducing the need for new agricultural land.
 Regional identification of degraded pastures would facilitate the
 targeting of agricultural extension and advisory services and rural credit
 efforts aimed at fostering pasture recovery. Since only 1% of Brazilian
 municipalities contain 25% of degraded pastures, focusing pasture recovery
 efforts on this small group of municipalities could generate considerable
 benefits. More efficient allocation of degraded and native pastures for
 meat production and forest restoration could provide land enough to fully
 comply with its Forest Code requirements, while adding 9 million heads to
 the cattle inventory. Degraded pasture recovery and restoration is a
 win–win strategy that could boost livestock husbandry and avoid
 deforestation in Brazil and have to be the priority strategy of
 agribusiness sector.
description: All data in this file
 is available at Brazilian Governmental sites,  exclusively in Portuguese. 
 In order to ensure greater transparency about the data used as well as to
 assist users with limited knowledge in Portuguese, we provided here
 detailed processes of data search and selection.  For Efficiency, Stocking Rate and
 allocation data from Brazilian Agricultural Census 2017 were used. It is
 the most recent Brazilian census, conducted by the Brazilian Institute of
 Geography and Statistics. The census covered the entire national
 territory, covering the 5.03 million rural properties in 5,563
 municipalities, 26 states and the Federal District, with data reported
 from October 1, 2016 to September 30, 2017, and published in 2019 . The
 census adopted the collection and content premises suggested by the World
 Programme for the Census of Agriculture 2020, implemented by the Food and
 Agriculture Organization - FAO, and the International Standard Industrial
 Classification of all Economic Activities - ISIC - Revision 4. The census
 is divided into 13 themes with 137 interactive tables that allow advanced
 data selection and information combination.  Each table has 1 or more
 variables that can be combined with a series of search criteria, including
 producer profile, production type, geographical level, etc. The search
 results can be downloaded in 7 formats (different extensions). The census
 did not provide microdata - producer-level responses. The most detailed
 territorial level is the municipality. Labels of variables are available
 in the spreadsheets "TEfficiency", "SRate" and
 "degraded native allocation". For rural credit, data
 from The Rural Credit Data
 Matrix (MDCR) were used, which is an online platform of the Brazilian
 Central Bank (BCB) that allows access to information on the value and
 number of rural credit contracts signed by the official credit system,
 allowing search combined with different criteria, including month and year
 of operation, municipality, economic activity group, purpose (investment,
 costs etc.), product (pasture, milk, soybeans etc.), credit program and
 subprogram, sources of resources etc. The time series is updated monthly
 and covers the period from January 1, 2013 to the present. Data is
 available in spreadsheet labeled as "rural credit for
 pastures".  
description: Detailed information can be found in Supplemental Material of the
 manuscript under label rsos-201854.R1. Original data on
 Brazilian Agricultural Census is available
 at https://sidra.ibge.gov.br/pesquisa/censo-agropecuario/censo-agropecuario-2017 Original data on Rural Credit in Brazil is available at https://olinda.bcb.gov.br/olinda/servico/SICOR/versao/v2/aplicacao#!/recursos In our dataset, missing values are identified as "." Missing data is absence of information in the original source (Brazilian Agricultural Census and/or Rural Credit in Brazil).