Typology of cattle production in Brazil at the municipality level.

Brazil is one of largest beef producers in the world. Data from the Brazilian Agricultural Census 2006, carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), has shown that approximately 2.7 million farms had bovine cattle, i.e. more than half of the farms in the country, raising 176.1 million head. In the last three decades, the expansion of beef production has relied strongly on increasing stocking rates and animal productivity rather than expansion of pasture area. Still, there is high variability in productivity levels and technology adoption throughout the territory. Identifying and characterizing such variations is essential to allow improving the estimates of greenhouse gases flows, and to better evaluate mitigation and adaptation options besides other issues related to technology adoption and public policies