Sustainability is an actual theme and very present in all discussion in the tropical agriculture world, including Brazil. This country experienced high taxes of development in agribusiness, increasing exportation trading, producing foods of better quality and raising incoming rates of farmers. However, two mains aspects call the attention in respect to sustainability: excessive soil preparation with monoculture of annual crops and pasture degradation. These situations have brought losses in crop and livestock yields, increased soil degradation and collapse of natural resources. Continuous cropping of monoculture accelerates attacks of insects and diseases, specially the ones related to soil interactions. Technologies such as minimum tillage, crop rotation and crop-livestock integration can alleviate these problems and drive agriculture to sustainability. Minimum tillage has increase to more than 60% of soil tillage usage in Brazil. Adoption of this system in large scale, covering more regions, with different clime and soil, is highly dependent of crops that produce high amounts of residues and straw for better soil coverage. Crop-livestock integrated systems (CLIS) have been cultivated with many crops, such as: soybeans, corn, pearl millet, sorghum, cotton, sunflower, etc. and especially perennial tropical grasses asBrachiaria spp, intercropped or not. CLIS can be one important alternative to pasture recuperation and improvement of annual crops. They increase straw to minimum tillage systems, improve soil chemical, physical and biological properties, and better use of equipments, farmers income, and jobs in rural area. This paper analyze the state of the art in CLIS research, later results, and bring some considerations for the near the future of CLIS in Brazil.
Brachiaria; carbon stock; CLIS; crop-livestock integration; macrofauna; soil quality; sustainability
