Space-temporal Dynamics of Agriculture in the Primavera Municipality, Pará State, Brazil: Subsidies for Agroecological Transition

Abstract

The exploitation of natural resources to meet human needs for, among other reasons, the advancement of agriculture, livestock, and mining projects, causes changes in environmental systems in time and space. The research objective of this study is to evaluate the space-temporal dynamics of agriculture in the Primavera municipality, located in the Pará Northeast, from 1980 to 2018, and to offer subsidies for the agroecological transition of current agricultural production systems. The methodology is based on the analysis of land use and land cover maps, in three different periods (1984, 2008 and 2018), by using image processing from the LANDSAT (1984 and 2008) and Sentinel (2018) satellites. Agricultural sector characterization was also analyzed, by using secondary data on socioeconomic and productivity variables. The results show that, even after the setup of a large mining enterprise in the Primavera municipality, the agricultural sector did not show major changes in terms of land occupation, increasing from 23.3% (2008) to 29.3% (2018). In addition, when analyzing the agricultural sector, the technology level was found to be at a low level, with little use of chemical inputs and machines. Agricultural diversification was also found to be at a low level, with the cultivation of five crops, predominantly. It is necessary to seek alternatives to improve agricultural production, which can be made viable through the incorporation of sustainable production systems, based on agroecological principles.