Zonal Patterns of Agricultural Land Use in the State of Paraiba, Northeast Brazil

Abstract

Although Northeast Brazil has been recognized as being constituted by three distinct zones, the coastal sugar cane zone (zona da mata), the semiarid inland cattle country (sertão), and the transitional zone between them (agreste), their demarcation and the criteria for classification have not always been clear. The present study attempts to visualize the zonal pattern of land use and to propose a quantitative regionalization of the cultural landscape in the state of Paraíba, Northeast Brazil. Along a 270 kilometer belt from the Atlantic coast to Patos, the land use of one square kilometer plots was intensively surveyed at five-kilometer intervals near the coast and ten-kilometer intervals inland. Our analyses suggest that the agricultural land use pattern in the state of Paraíba is composed of eight distinct regions. Three regions are identified near the coast, the urbanized region, the sugar cane cultivation region, and the root crop producing region. The agreste, characterized by cattle raising and maize cultivation, is made up of the depression zone-parkland pasture region, the orographic rain-savanna pasture region, and the dense caatinga region. The sertão, where extensive grazing in sparse caatinga is the dominant form of livelihood, consists of the Borborema Plateau and the Patos Basin. These regional divisions, identified by our field survey, were verified by analyses of statistical data on livestock and cultivated crops by município as well as by observations of roadside sales of agricultural commodities by peasants.