Agriculture and biodiversity damage: A prospective evaluation of the impact of Brazilian agriculture on its ecoregions through life cycle assessment methodology.

The natural ecosystems' replacement by farmland and the consequent biodiversity damage (BD) for agriculture are one of the principal concerns worldwide. The development of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology involves enormous efforts to include BD parameters and develop a prospective LCA approach for future evaluations of production and technologies use. Thus, this work aims to determine the current impacts and estimate the future impacts in terms of damage to biodiversity caused by land occupation by agricultural commodities produced in Brazil, such as coffee, corn, oranges, and sugar cane, for the six ecoregions present in the country-Amazon, Atlantic Forest, Caatinga, Cerrado, Pampas, and Pantanal-in the 20-year period from 2015 to 2035.

The dynamics of coffee production in Brazil.

Coffee is a crop of significant importance for Brazilian agrobusiness. There is evidence that both the geographic distribution of coffee production, and the varieties of coffee produced, have changed throughout Brazil over the course of time. Furthermore, it appears that these developments are associated with structural changes resulting from reductions in government intervention and its effects on prices in the coffee market, which has established a new dynamic of coffee production in the country.