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Agriculture in Brazil is booming. Brazil has the world’s second largest cattle herd and is the second largest producer of soybeans, with the production of beef, soybeans, and bioethanol forecast to increase further. Questions remain, however, about how Brazil can reconcile increases in agricultural production with protection of its remaining natural vegetation. While high hopes have been placed on the potential for intensification of low-productivity cattle ranching to spare land for other agricultural uses, cattle productivity in the Amazon biome (29% of the Brazilian cattle herd) remains stubbornly low, and it is not clear how to realize theoretical productivity gains in practice. We provide results from six initiatives in the Brazilian Amazon, which are successfully improving cattle productivity in beef and dairy production on more than 500,000 hectares of pastureland, while supporting compliance with the Brazilian Forest Code. Spread across diverse geographies, and using a wide range of technologies, participating farms have improved productivity by 30–490%. High-productivity cattle ranching requires some initial investment (R$1300–6900/ha or US$410–2180/ha), with average pay-back times of 2.5–8.5 years. We conclude by reflecting on the challenges that must be overcome to scale up these young initiatives, avoid rebound increases in deforestation, and mainstream sustainable cattle ranching in the Amazon.

Land is a source of sustenance, resources and “is literally the base upon which all human societies are built” (Owens and Cowell 2011). In addition to being a material base, land is charged with diverse social and cultural dimensions (Owens and Cowell 2011), while terrestrial ecosystems provide a number of ecosystem services (Daily 1997). The concept of ecosystem services is increasingly an inuential way to consider conservation and is becoming a central tool to express humanity’s need for the rest of living nature. Notwithstanding a number of denitions, the most commonly cited one is from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), which denes ecosystem services as “the benets people obtain from ecosystems” (MEA 2005). Terrestrial ecosystems provide regulating functions, for instance, for climate change; provisioning services for food, fuel, and water resources; supporting services for biodiversity and nutrient recycling; and nally, cultural, such as recreation (Figure 5.1). The capability of terrestrial ecosystems to provide these services is determined by changes in land use and land cover, socioeconomic factors, biodiversity, atmospheric composition, and climate (Metzger et al. 2006).