Is domestic agricultural production sufficient to meet national food nutrient needs in Brazil?

Reducing the impacts of agriculture on the environment is one of the greatest challenges of this century. In Brazil, it is often argued that more land use change is needed to achieve food security. However, analyses seeking to understand the dynamics between agricultural production for exports and food intended for the Brazilian population have not approached the question if national agriculture is sufficient to provide Brazilians with the necessary nutrients, according to nutritional recommendations.

A spatiotemporal database on the energy, macro and micro-nutrients from the Brazilian agricultural production.

To construct this database, we integrate the nutritional content of 62 crops and 5 livestock categories to estimate the amount of 21 macro and micro-nutrients (including energy) that were produced from agriculture in each Brazilian municipality during the last three decades. Additionally, we allocate these nutrients according to their share in the food system (for example, human food, animal feed, export etc.).