Farming the Chaco plains: tales from both sides of the fence

JOBBAGY, E; GRAU, HR; PARUELO, J; VIGLIZZO, E

JOURNAL OF ARID ENVIRONMENTS

ACADEMIC PRESS LTD-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2015 vol. 123 p. 1 - 2

0140-1963

The Chaco plains of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay host one thelast large global reserves of fertile soils that are still uncultivated(Lambin et al., 2013). Most of this non farmed land is home forthe most important tract of native dry forests of the world. Social,economic and technological changes are driving a fast expansionof agriculture over the whole region; challenging indigenous communities,rural settlers, farmers, conservationists, and policymakers alike (Grau et al., 2005). This special issue describes thisprocess from multiple perspectives and explores its associated productivebenefits and constrains as well as some of its major environmentalimpacts. Combining creative remote sensingapproaches, field observations, and national statistics; a collectivesynthesis effort embodied in ten articles pushes available informationand concepts a step further. While these contributions respondto an urgent regional demand, they provide at the same time usefulknowledge for other active agricultural frontiers on dry regions likethe Cerrados and Caatinga in Brazil and the Miombo and Mopane inSub-Saharan Africa