Resumen

AIZEN, Marcelo A; GARIBALDI, Lucas A  y  DONDO, Mariana. Soybean expansion and agriculture diversity in Argentina. Ecol. austral [online]. 2009, vol.19, n.1, pp.45-54. ISSN 1667-782X.

The environmental and socio-economic consequences of the great expansion of soybean (Glycine max) cultivation in Argentina during the last two decades are strongly debated in our society. Soybean and its derivatives constitute presently most important Argentina's export and cash source. Here, we tested whether soybean´s expansion has caused a detectable decrease in crop diversity. We specifically assessed changes in total cultivated area, identity and degree of dominance of the most important crop (i.e., the one accounting for the largest proportion of the total cultivated area), and crop diversity over the period 1961-2006. Argentina's total cultivated area increased by about 45% from 1990 to 2006 and it was associated with a replacement of wheat by soybean as the dominant crop. In 2006 soybean accounted for ~50% of the total cultivated area in our country, the largest dominance reached by any crop during the last five decades. Different diversity indicators, including Shannon-Wiener´s H´, Pielou´s J and Hurlbert´s PIE indexes agreed that crop diversity has decreased >20% during the period of soybean dominance. In addition to the direct loss of biodiversity caused by deforestation for agriculture expansion, our results evidence a trend towards homogenization of Argentina's agriculture landscape with likely consequences for remnant biodiversity, degradation of different ecosystem services, and a more vulnerable production structure.

Palabras clave : Crops; Dominance; Evenness; Soybean.

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