Today is Friday, 26 July 2024.
Currently, crop-livestock-forest integration systems (ILPF) are becoming increasingly important for less developed countries and with poorer populations.
Interested countries would basically be those from the “Global South”, as has become a reference in the last COP meetings on climate change, especially in reference to African countries, South America, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. In other words, where there are still large remaining forest areas on Earth and less confined livestock farming, despite the four largest countries - Russian Federation, Canada, United States and China - being in the “Global North”
In the ILPF system, the focus is on the productivity of the entire system.
Simply increasing the number of trees without scientific criteria may make sense from a climate perspective, but it will probably not be optimal even from a socio-economic perspective, with a potential reduction in crop and livestock production, perpetuating poverty and undeveloped subsistence cultures. Yes? No? Perhaps?
In this sense, research like this one conducted in Brazil by Embrapa Agrossilvopastoril and others already covered on our Carbon Credit Markets portal are very important.
The Brazilian study is being conducted in Sinop, state of Mato Grosso, in an area of 72 hectares. In addition to wood, the area also produces meat and grains.
As a result of this first cycle of the ILPF system evaluated, the following stand out:
(1) Edge effect favored tree growth and carbon accumulation in trees
(2) Trees stored more carbon than in monoculture
(3) Defining the design of trees in the production system depends on whether the producer wants to add or replace income
Edge effect - border - occurs in external or taller trees because they receive more light, water and nutrients than those inside and because they have less competition with neighboring trees.
The ILPF system, which initially had triple rows of trees and began to have simple rows after cutting the lateral lines, was the one that accumulated the most carbon, exceeding 30 kg/year per individual. The value was statistically different from the others and was well above around 20 kg/year per tree in monoculture.
According to researcher Maurel Behling cited in the article “In addition to favoring the gain in tree volume… there is a higher rate of carbon accumulation in trees in the ILPF. It is carbon that will theoretically have a longer life cycle than that used as biomass.” The researcher also remembers that carbon is not only stored in wood. Trees in the production system still leave a large volume of carbon in the area in the form of leaves, branches, litter and organic matter.
“Around 10 tons of waste per hectare that remains originates from the useful area with trees. This does not take into account stumps and roots, which on average represent 20% of the tree's total biomass”, informs the researcher.
The clear cutting of eucalyptus trees after 12 years ended the first cycle of the ILPF experiment, allowing the global assessment together with beef cattle farming and grain production that occurred throughout this period.
According to a statement, with the end of this cycle, new work should begin in the next rainy season, 2nd. half of the year in the “Global South”. This time, in addition to eucalyptus, teak will be used as an arboreal component of the system. A consortium with the two species will also be tested, since teak loses its leaves during the dry season, reducing shade for the animals. The idea is that eucalyptus contributes to maintaining thermal comfort and scaling the income obtained from trees.
In other words, optimization of the most advanced existing carbon capture and storage technology: trees and their trunks.
See here the Introductory Course (in Portuguese) on Crop-Livestock-Forest Integration (ILPF) - Class 2024, offered by Rede ILPF, which includes Bradesco, Cocamar, John Deere, Minerva Foods, SOESP, Suzano, Syngenta, Timac Agro and Embrapa itself .
Published on July 23, 2024, click on the image below for the full article “Após 12 anos, pesquisa traz embasamento para plantio de árvores em sistemas ILPF”.
You may also be interested in another outstanding result (in Portuguese), the PPS System (Precocity, Productivity and Sustainability), a management strategy for breeding livestock using ILP and IPF, other forms of integration. In this case, researcher Luciano Lopes indicates “Despite being a little more complex from an operational point of view, this management brings gains beyond the animal component. The environmental part also benefits in terms of carbon dynamics, for example.”
We would like to thank Forestry Engineer Carlos G. Caleiro Guimarães for bringing us the subject of this article.
