Agriculture And Conservation In Latin America In The 21st Century: Shall We Celebrate The 'Forest Transition' Or Actively Build The 'Nature Matrix'

Is it possible to reconcile biodiversity conservation, agriculture and social wellbeing in Latin American small farmer territories? The question has been subjected to enquiry and intense debate in the past three decades. Recently, the terms of this debate and the answers provided have become more transparent, and deserve to be discussed and communicated to a broader audience. Some studies in the Caribbean and in small regions of Latin America have created the expectation that deforestation is being reverted in the subcontinent due to the growth of market economies. This so-called 'forest transition' would be similar to that observed in Europe and the USA during the XIX-XX centuries. The forest transition model proposes that increasing further the yields and profitability of industrial agriculture in the best endowed land has three virtuous consequences: a) it can satisfy actual and potential food demand of the human population; b) it out-competes small farmers who produce in marginal land and draws them to abandon highly biodiverse territories and migrate to cities where their needs can be more readily satisfied; and c) in consequence, it simultaneously solves problems associated with conservation, production and poverty issues. The empirical fallacies and theoretical shortcomings of the forest transition model are briefly reviewed, and we present novel arguments by authors proposing a different strategy to simultaneously address biological conservation, food production and poverty: to increase the quality of the 'nature matrix' considering the theory of metapopulations, the practice of agroecology and the politics of local and regional food sovereignty.