Explaining the persistence of low income and environmentally degrading land uses in the Brazilian Amazon

International audienceTropical forests continue to be plagued by the dual sustainability challenges of deforestation and rural poverty. We seekto understand why many of the farmers living in the Brazilian Amazon, home to the world’s largest tropical agricultural-forest frontier,persist in agricultural activities associated with low incomes and high environmental damage. To answer this question, we assess thefactors that shape the development and distribution of agricultural activities and farmer well-being in these frontiers. Our study utilizesa uniquely comprehensive social-ecological dataset from two regions in the eastern Brazilian Amazon and employs a novel conceptualframework that highlights the interdependencies between household attributes, agricultural activities, and well-being. We find thatlivestock production, which yields the lowest per hectare incomes, remains the most prevalent land use in remote areas, but manyexamples of high income fruit, horticulture, and staple crop production exist on small properties, particularly in peri-urban areas. Thetransition to more profitable land uses is limited by lagging supply chain infrastructure, social preferences, and the fact that incomeassociated with land use activities is not a primary source of perceived life quality. Instead subjective well-being is more heavily influencedby the nonmonetary attributes of a rural lifestyle (safety, tranquility, community relations, etc.). We conclude that transitions awayfrom low-income land uses in agricultural-forest frontiers of the Brazilian Amazon need not abandon a land-focused vision ofdevelopment, but will require policies and programs that identify and discriminate households based on a broader set of householdassets, cultural attributes, and aspirations than are traditionally applied. At a broader scale, access to distant markets for high valuecrops must be improved via investments in processing, storage, and marketing infrastructure