Land competition and prices are likely to intensify in Latin America, because multiple areas in the region have many productive uses.
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Potential cropland areas
Potential land uses¹ by 2030
Area breakdown by cover and suitability,
%
Pastureland
Natural land
43 Mha
125 million hectares (Mha)
95
84
16
5
Suitable for 1–2 crops
Suitable for 3–5 crops
Protected areas (including primary forests)²
Potential for natural-land conversion to cropland
Potential for pasture conversion to cropland³
Managed and secondary forests⁴
Forested areas
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Potential cropland areas
Forested areas
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Potential cropland areas
Forested areas
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Potential cropland areas
Forested areas
of land likely to be converted by 2030 is also likely to be suitable for 3 or more crops (maize, soy, wheat, palm oil, or sugar cane).
~90%
Preliminary insight
the total additional need for cropland in Latin America (23 Mha) by 2030 could be met through pastureland and natural-land conversion.
7×
Preliminary insight
¹Estimated from the product of past conversion to crops and probability of conversion coming from a land-use-specific random forest model.
²Map does not show the potential protected areas based on IBAT Key Biodiversity Areas that could be protected for each country to achieve 30% of protected areas of their surface by 2030. However, McKinsey’s Transition Scenarios in Agriculture and Land Use Sectors (TRAILS) model protects 14–30% of these areas, depending on the scenario.
³Some of these areas can be defined as hot spots, which are areas with more than 30% probability of future change in land use when considering the upper quartile of intensity of historical change within a 10-kilometer radius.
⁴Here, forest encapsulates several biomes as defined by MapBiomas, an initiative of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimation System (SEEG).
Source: McKinsey ACRE
McKinsey & Company
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