Alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture: Potential alternative technologies for limited resource family farms in Acre, Brazil

The overall goal of this research was to investigate whether mucuna preta and mechanization are feasible likelihood strategies for diverse limited-resource family farms in Alianca community, located in the Southeastern portion of the state of Acre, Brazil. The main objective of this study was to simulate and analyze the current livelihood system in the Alianca community to serve as the basis for evaluating potential alternative technologies to slash-and-burn agriculture. This community was selected because it has been participating in the Proambiente program and already cultivating mucuna preta as an alternative to recover degraded areas in the livelihood system. This study involved the participation of households in the community that are and are not participating in the Proambiente program. Ten families that were and ten that were not participating in the program were purposely selected, and interviews were conducted. Household interviews were designed to collect information on household composition, resource ownership, animals, cropping systems including inputs and outputs, the types and availability of markets, and the types of fire management programs being implemented in the community, all to be used in the development of the Ethnographic Linear Program model. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, an Ethnographic Linear Program (ELP) was used to simulate the current situation and project future production, family income and consumption with no changes in technologies. The model simulates the current livelihood strategies of selected household types with respect to levels of production. In order to conduct this analysis, the BASIC ELP was then used to model diverse households and to test potential alternative technologies to slash-and-burn agriculture in the Alianca livelihood system. Mucuna preta and mechanization can be seen as acceptable alternative technologies to slash-and-burn agriculture in this community. These two alternatives have shown a considerable increase in end cash for these diverse households when they were introduced into the livelihood system.