Land-Use Planning in the Chaco Plain (Burruyacú, Argentina). Part 1: Evaluating Land-Use Options to Support Crop Diversification in an Agricultural Frontier Area Using Physical Land Evaluation

The Burruyacú district (Tucumán province, Argentina) is a farming frontier in the western Chaco plain, at the foothills of the sub-Andean mountain ranges, where agricultural land-uses are in conflict with the conservation and management of the Chaco forest. Over the last decades, large-scale farming rapidly expanded due to population pressure, attractive market prices, easy accessibility, favourable annual rainfall, fertile soils, and flexible land tenure. Cropland extension, mainly for heavily mechanized soybean production, has resulted in important reduction of the Chaco forest and also caused physical soil degradation, especially soil compaction, and soil erosion. Land suitability was assessed using the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) framework for a set of crops ecologically adapted to the area, including soybean, maize, wheat, sugarcane, citrus, and safflower. Only 16% of the study area has high suitability for most of the selected crops. Major limitations for cropping are low annual rainfall and flooding in the east of the study area, and topography (slope) and flooding in the west. As climate varies over relatively short periods of time, with recurrent cycles of dry and rainy years, land suitability for the selected crops was also assessed under extreme but realistic climatic conditions. Under rainy-year conditions, almost all the study area is unsuitable or marginally suitable for most of the crops. Under dry-year conditions, the study area is unsuitable for all crops, except safflower, which is more drought-resistant. This article proposes alternatives to the mono-cropping of soybean with the aim to help farmers make adequate decisions on land-use and management under deteriorating environmental conditions and for addressing the issue of competitive land uses in the context of land-use planning.