Until the 1970s, the Cerrado, with its poor land and its isolation of communication routes, did not attract the envy, except those of gold seekers whose activities will contribute to the creation of some Central West cities. Occupied by extensive farming fazendas that masked the presence of small human groups organized around the collection of local resources (Ribeiro, 2002), the Cerrado constituted on a quarter of the Brazilian territory an indefinite zone: what remained if one removed the areas of dynamic economic occupation of the South and Southeast, the stagnant areas of the Northeast and the Amazon rainforest. From a naturalistic point of view, it is a space bringing together a wide variety of natural environments that stretches from campos limposgrassy meadows or savannas with cerradoes and savannahs. The Cerrado forms a heterogeneous set of savannas characteristic of the central regions of Brazil.
“The march towards the West”, slogan launched by the populist government of Gétulio Vargas in 1939, directs a part of the migratory flows towards Central Planalto. The aim was to respond to land tenure tensions and to allow small farmers access to property (Ferreira, 1988). The construction of the new federal capital, Brasilia, finally opened the region around 1960.
The intensive occupation of the Cerrado as agricultural frontier appears later carried by the modernization of agriculture and the instruments of regional planning 2. In 1973, the Brazilian Agricultural and Livestock Research Company (Embrapa) was created to support the agricultural research and the “agricultural vocation” of Cerrado. Poor, acidic soils with low productivity are “corrected” by large scale limestone and fertilizer input. The advantages of Cerrado consist of large flat areas specific to mechanization and monoculture, with deep well-drained soils, average rainfall concentrated over a 6-month season. Speculation is strong: Cerrado is expected to supply 50 million hectares for grain production, doubling the amount of land devoted to agriculture throughout the country (Aubertin, 1988). International desires begin to express themselves: the Prodecer,
Embrapa’s research intensifies with the development of an agriculture that meets the new parameters of competitiveness (direct seeding, selection of new varieties, biotechnologies with genetic improvement and GMO diffusion, chemical fertilizers, tillage). . Research on the adaptation of soybeans to the Cerrado climate has been particularly successful, with yields exceeding 4 t / ha (Photo 1) 3 . Sugar cane is also experiencing a new boom in energy production, mainly focused on the domestic market (Castro, 2007) 4. It settles on lands dedicated to extensive livestock farming, it also replaces the land cultivated in soybeans with already corrected soils. It is held responsible for the intense clearing of the Cerrado lands and maintains a border movement from south-east to north-west. The Pró-Álcool national program was launched in 1975 to achieve energy self-sufficiency. Thirty years later, with the development of flex automobile engines using either gasoline or ethanol, Brazil is experiencing a second expansion of cane growing
