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Agriculture is one of the most important industries in the world. In this context, the importance of Brazil as a strategic country to meet a range of SDG's targets linked to food security, fighting against hunger, and poverty reduction is undeniable. This study aimed to highlight the production and dissemination of scientific research developed by Brazilian institutions, and to identify prominent authors and institutions based on articles related to sustainability, agriculture, livestock, and agribusiness. A bibliometric analysis was developed based on a sample of 3139 documents published between 2000 and 2022, comprising 21,380 authors that were then analyzed using the Biblioshiny package. As result, the term "sustainability" showed growth as it branched out to semantically similar terms, such as "sustainable agriculture" and "sustainable intensification"; and "crop–livestock integration" and "agroforestry" were highlighted as important in the development of future research. The majority of documents were produced by the University of São Paulo (~33%), the State University of São Paulo (~15%), and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (~11%), suggesting that their researchers could act as coordinators in future research through the formation of multi-collaborative groups to jointly lead to the participatory elaboration of public policies that promote more sustainable paths for agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contractual relationship between the processing firm and the broiler smallholder presents incessant conflicts of interest and inequality due to technical and economic discrepancies, leading to an undervaluation of the producers' remuneration. This study aims to deepen the discussion on searching for a more balanced monetary exchange between processing firms and broiler smallholders based on scientific aspects. For this, the emergy theory and its concepts are used while considering a representative broiler production system at Concórdia, Brazil. The results indicate the importance of including cultural information in the emergy-based model calculation, which achieved the highest emergy contribution (~63%; transformity = 1.73 ×   10 8 sej/J) for the broiler smallholder. On the other hand, the cultural information was not sufficient to increase the sustainability of the broiler production system. The results show an imbalance in the monetary exchange between the processing firm and broiler smallholder from both perspectives (the economic and emergy-based ones), which indicates higher values (USD 0.32/broiler and EmUSD 1.62/broiler) than the practiced payment value of USD 0.24/broiler. Evaluating the "(eco)cost" from an emergy-based accounting perspective recognizes that production depends not only on tangible physical resources but also on knowledge, skills and information ("iceberg of value" thinking). Policy and decision makers must therefore consider the promotion of public policies that subside initiatives, including social and environmental welfare programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to evaluate the sustainability of integrated dairy–crop production systems by employing emergy and economic theory perspectives, and to identify strategies to improve the intensification of dairy production systems. A case study of a small Brazilian dairy production system (PROP) was created to assess dairy herd feed exchanges as a sustainability pathway. Three scenarios were proposed for the examination of a dairy production system: extensive (EXT); semi-intensive (SIS); and intensive (INT). The Interlink Decision Making Index (IDMI) was used to compare sustainability among them. The PROP demonstrated higher environmental performance than the other scenarios (ESI = 1.30, 0.65, 0.95, and 0.71, for PROP, INT, SIS, and EXT, respectively); however, PROP's profitability was 1.6 times lower than that of SIS and INT, although PROP's profitability was higher than that of the EXT scenario. Notably, the IDMI identified the SIS scenario as having the best sustainability among those studied. We concluded that the consideration of the energy contribution for feed ingredients yields a more equitable evaluation of environmental performance in integrated dairy–crop production systems, which leads us to propose the following suggestions: (i) target higher profit performance by changing extensive dairy systems to semi-intensive systems that utilize feed ingredients produced at the farm, and (ii) promote higher environmental performance by transforming intensive dairy systems to semi-intensive systems that are directed more toward maintaining environmental factors. In our view, public policies should focus on bonifications that upgrade dairy systems to promote and utilize best practices for dairy–crop integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to evaluate the economic and environmental performance of a Brazilian sheep production system (in the São José do Rio Preto (SJRP) region). The cost of production and the emergy indicators were calculated, and compared with other scientific results. The study was divided into three stages: (i) construction of the conceptual model; (ii) transformation of all resources and stocks by unit emergy value; and (iii) analysis of emergy indices. For emergy analysis, imported purchased inputs (P) represented 59.84% of all emergy, in which soy and corn contributed 16.14% and 11.38%, respectively. These inputs also contributed significantly to the economic cost of production as 14.63% and 12.55% of the total cost, respectively. Compared to other production systems, the SJRP system presented a lower emergy production rate and a higher environmental load rate, reducing the emergy sustainability index. In addition, it had the highest level of investment in emergy, suggesting that its sustainability is inferior to other referenced production systems. However, the SJRP system had the lowest emergy exchange ratio, indicating that this system is the closest to a fair price. In conclusion, the system must be reconsidered to become more sustainable; mainly with regard to the confinement of lambs that consume large amounts of concentrate (corn and soybean) from outside the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]