Summary

Many difficulties are encountered when trying to farm land in humid tropical forests.  Even so, millions of small farmers have migrated to the Amazônia via public and private colonization projects.  

The State of Rondônia, Brazil, most likely provides the most stunning portrayal of both the dimensions and dynamics of these activities in the Amazônia, as well as environmental impacts and the mistakes of research and rural development in this region.  

In order  to better understand this process - the characteristics of the systems and the production techniques practiced, the existing problems and the main impacts generated - researchers of Embrapa NMA, of the Brazilian Agency of Agricultural Research (Embrapa), and the non-governmental agency ECOFORÇA - Research and Development, chose the Municipal of Machadinho d'Oeste, in Rondônia, as a long-term study project.  This research project represents the unedited occurrences in the Brazilian Amazônia.  Already in its tenth year of following the development of more than 450 small rural properties with close to 250 biophysical, socio-economic, and environmental variables, the project is expected to continue for a time period of 100 years!

Thanks to this persistent will, the Amazônia provides us today with a wealth of information, all georeferenced and informatisized, on agriculture and the environmental impact of production systems in use in Machadinho d'Oeste and its evolution trends.  And it is precisely the evolution of sustainable agriculture that most impacts the region today.  The methods, the results and the perspectives of this multi-disciplinary work are to follow.