agricultural frontieris a term elaborated to designate the region of the country that suffers from the advance of agricultural practices to the detriment of the devastation of forests.
The agricultural frontier of Brazil has already been in several regions. Its changes happened throughout history due to the political and economic situation of each period.
The first stage of Brazil's agricultural frontier was located on the country's coast, during the initial period of colonization carried out by the Portuguese. When the discoverers arrived in our country, they began to devastate the Atlantic Forest for the extraction of Pau-Brasil. Then, they used this area to plant sugarcane. Later, mining activities and the performance of other agricultural practices further expanded this frontier.
Over the years, the agricultural frontier was advancing into our territory. In the middle of the 20th century, it reached the Cerrado forest, which is located, for the most part, in the Brazilian Midwest region.
As a result, in a few years, more than half of the Cerrado had already been destroyed for planting, mainly soy and sugarcane. Today, less than 20% of the original vegetation of the Brazilian Cerrado remains.
Currently, the agricultural frontier is located in the Amazon Forest, more specifically in the states of Pará, Mato Grosso, Tocantins and Maranhão, and it continues to advance. Despite surveillance and control measures in the Amazon carried out by the Brazilian government, every day hundreds or thousands of hectares of forest fall to the ground.
