Análise da dinâmica espaço-temporal de culturas agrícolas no Brasil: uma abordagem metodológica.

Abstract

At present, Brazil presents itself as a major agricultural producer for food and bio-energy purposes in the entire world. Year-to-year, production records are hit by the agricultural sector. On the other hand, there is a perspective for severe problems in food and energy supply in the world, especially in Africa, where many people live in poverty and hunger. In this context, this master s dissertation presents a proposal for the analysis of the spatio-temporal dynamics of the agricultural production using the concepts and tools of Geomatics in pursuit of sustainable development. It was developed a methodology for the generation of agricultural production indicators at different levels of Brazilian territorial structure which allows the synthetic presentation, through cartograms and digital animations, of the spatial and spatio-temporal dynamics of the main crops. For this, a database of the production of main crops was created, indicators that represent the spatial dynamics of agricultural production and presentation tools for these indicators through the space-temporal dynamics were developed. Finally, the areas with focus in the food production and agricultural expansion for bio-energy (ethanol and palm oil) production were related. It is intended, through this work, to contribute to the decision making with visualization tools of the reality of Brazilian agriculture. Links were developed with agro-ecological zoning, with the instruments of food security and with the ecological footprint, with the presentation of the agricultural production of crops such as sugar cane, corn, soybeans, palm oil and cotton.