Marcellus Caldas | Kansas State University (original) (raw)

Papers by Marcellus Caldas

Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, Nov 10, 2022

Consumers are increasingly demanding information regarding the characteristics of products, their... more Consumers are increasingly demanding information regarding the characteristics of products, their place of origin and methods of production. A Geographical Indication (GI) can be understood as a way to meet these demands, as it protects the origin of the product, as well as its characteristics. In addition to contributing to territorial development, GI signs have the potential to add value to products and help producers to become more competitive. However, some authors argue that there are barriers that can prevent the benefits of GI from reaching producers. Therefore, this article aims to identify the barriers and benefits of GI for producers. To reach this end, a Systematic Literature Review was carried out. As a result, it was observed that among the main benefits offered by the GI are higher prices, access to markets and preservation of cultural identity. Regarding the challenges, it was highlighted the existence of inefficient institutions, organizational problems, power asymmetry and appropriation of value by the most powerful agents of the supply chain. To conclude, this paper shows that the difficulties and benefits of GI to producers are not absolute and vary from region to region. In this sense, further research on the impact of GI, especially in developing countries, is necessary. The results here presented may be used as a base for future research that search to identify the importance of GI for producers and may also contribute to the development of actions or public policies related to GI.

Journal of Environmental Management, 2022

Agricultural landscapes are the leading edge in the advancement of sustainability and climate cha... more Agricultural landscapes are the leading edge in the advancement of sustainability and climate change adaptation. The purpose of this study is to endogenize culture as shaped by natural-cultural feedback into individuals' decision-making processes on sustainability policy support. We present an agent-based model in which an adaptive cultural decision-rule quantifies the probability of an agent deciding to support a wildlife area policy for the Smoky Hill River Watershed (SHRW) in Kansas, USA. By using an ABM to examine the watershed as a coupled natural and human system, we learned that agents would adopt a new behavior, voting for the policy, if the cultural conditions were right, with high levels of beliefs and norms for freshwater and its biota. Our results indicate that individuals in the SHRW are not engaged in caring for fish, plants, and bird richness in their rivers and playas with few individuals supporting the policy in the naïve cultural setting (8.9 % of simulated population). However, enough agents would support the policy under a lower cultural threshold (40.7 % of simulated population). Our results show that sustainability policies need to account for the local culture to gain support, and if a policy is culturally meaningful, it does not need to be cheap. For an agricultural landscape, such as those commonly found in the Central Great Plains, this study presents new levers for policymakers on the conditions needed to help assemble popular support for sustainability policies.

Society & Natural Resources, Jun 3, 2014

ABSTRACT Direct action land reform (DALR) and settlement formation are new drivers of deforestati... more ABSTRACT Direct action land reform (DALR) and settlement formation are new drivers of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. However, until now no research has paid attention to fragmentation patterns and the social processes that lead to them. This article analyzes two types of settlements, spontaneous and social movement organization-led settlements. The study uses neutral landscape models (NLMs) to compare simulated landscapes with the real fragmentation patterns found in DALR settlements. In sequence, the article uses landscape metrics to analyze the temporal and spatial dynamics of fragmentation patterns in these two types of DALR settlements. Results showed that there are significant differences between real landscape patterns and simulated landscapes using NLMs. In other words, human interferences did play a significant role in shaping deforestation patches in DALR settlements. Our metric results revealed a process in which deforestation patch mean area, shape complexity, and physical connectedness increase over time.

Annals of The Association of American Geographers, Mar 1, 2007

Journal of Latin American Geography, 2007

... Development and Security in the Brazilian Amazon Cynthia S. Simmons, Marcellus M. Caldas, Ste... more ... Development and Security in the Brazilian Amazon Cynthia S. Simmons, Marcellus M. Caldas, Stephen P. Aldrich, and Robert T. Walker Department of Geography Michigan State University Stephen G. Perz Department of Sociology University of Florida ...

DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Aug 1, 2017

Brazil is the fourth largest milk producer in the world, and Parana state is the third largest pr... more Brazil is the fourth largest milk producer in the world, and Parana state is the third largest producer in the country. Milk production plays an important socioeconomic role in Parana state, and since the 1990s, institutional and market changes have influenced Parana’s milk production. Given this context, this study searches to analyze the spatial dynamics of dairy activity in Parana state. Specifically, it seeks to identify areas of greater expansion and contraction in dairy activities, and discuss possible structural and socioeconomic consequences in those regions. Data concerning productive and economic variables of the 399 municipalities in Parana state were used to generate an indicator of dairy activity through Common Factor Analysis. Cluster analysis allowed the formation of groups, according to municipalities’ importance in Parana’s dairy activity. We conclude that since the 1990s, there has been displacement of dairy activity from the northern regions and toward the south. Dairy activity has started to occupy areas otherwise considered "agriculturally empty" and socioeconomically vulnerable. Those areas, along with traditional production regions, comprise a new "milk corridor" in Parana. This may generate a set of socioeconomic benefits in the region. Important structural changes may occur along the dairy chain, and both public and private policies should be set to assure dairy chain competitiveness in Parana state.

Science, Apr 21, 2023

Areas set aside for conservation within private lands may be key to enhancing biodiversity-friend... more Areas set aside for conservation within private lands may be key to enhancing biodiversity-friendly landscapes. This conservation strategy should be especially effective in highly threatened regions that are poorly protected by public lands, such as the Brazilian Cerrado. Brazil’s Native Vegetation Protection Law has included set-aside areas within private properties, but their relevance to conservation has not been evaluated. We assess whether private lands are contributing to biodiversity in the Cerrado, a global biodiversity conservation priority and major region for food production, where land use conflicts are often at odds with conservation objectives. We determined that private protected areas accommodate up to 14.5% of threatened vertebrate species ranges, which increases to 25% when considering the distribution of remaining native habitat. Moreover, the spatial spread of private protected areas benefits a large number of species. Ecological restoration of private protected lands would improve the benefits of this protection system, especially in the Southeastern Cerrado, where a large economic hub meets a threat hotspot.

Journal of Environmental Management, Aug 1, 2022

"Culture influences on human decision-making processes toward environmental policy: an integrativ... more "Culture influences on human decision-making processes toward environmental policy: an integrative model of human-environment interaction" (2018).

Journal of Geography & Natural Disasters, 2012

The Professional Geographer, Aug 1, 2011

Knowing reference (i.e., baseline) riverine nutrient concentrations is essential to understand fu... more Knowing reference (i.e., baseline) riverine nutrient concentrations is essential to understand fundamental processes of biogeochemical transport from continents to the ocean, describing ecological conditions, and informing managers of best attainable conditions for nutrient abatement and controlling anthropogenic eutrophication. We used data from 434 Brazilian watersheds representative of six South American biomes to estimate expected nutrient levels in the absence of anthropogenic influence. We used a novel watershed-based approach to describe spatial patterns throughout Brazil and for the entire Amazon basin. We found reference total nitrogen concentrations were most closely related to biome, whereas total phosphorus levels were to soil properties in addition to climatic factors influencing biomes. We found that many areas have intrinsically high background phosphorus and relatively low nitrogen, suggesting nitrogen-limitation of freshwaters could be widespread in South America, a...

From 2005 to 2012 sugarcane planted area increased by 54% in Brazil, reaching 9 million ha. This ... more From 2005 to 2012 sugarcane planted area increased by 54% in Brazil, reaching 9 million ha. This expansion was stronger in the Brazilian Cerrado, especially in the states of Goias and Mato Grosso do Sul which are the new frontier of sugarcane production. The rapid expansion of sugarcane production in Brazil has the potential to reorganize the agricultural production landscape. Previous studies that examined the expansion trend and production system at a larger scale found evidence for the transition to a sugarcane producing region. However, little is known on how farmers decide which agricultural production to pursue and which land use to replace in the new frontier of sugarcane production. The goal of this chapter is to analyze farmers’ acreage response during the proliferation of the sugarcane industry into the new production frontier. More specifically, we estimate a partial adjustment model to examine farmers’ decisions toward sugarcane production in the states of Goias and Mato...

Journal of Environmental Management, 2021

Estimating vulnerability is critical to understand human-induced influenceimpacts on the environm... more Estimating vulnerability is critical to understand human-induced influenceimpacts on the environmental system. The purpose of the current study was to integrate machine learning algorithm and Twitter data to estimate environmental vulnerability in the Brazilian Cerrado for the years 2011 and 2016. We first selected six exposure indicators and five sensitivity indicators to build an environmental vulnerability model and applied an Autoencoder algorithm to find the representation of exposure and sensitivity, respectively. Then the Displaced Ideal method was used to estimate environmental vulnerability. Finally, related historical Twitter data was mined from these two years to validate the results. The findings showed that the percent of land classified as areas of low, medium and high environmental vulnerability were 6.72%, 34.85%, and 58.44% in 2011 and 3.45%, 33.68% and 62.87% in 2016, respectively and most high environmental vulnerability areas were in the Southern Cerrado. Moreover, the Twitter data results showed that more than 85% of tweets occurred in the areas considered as high environmental vulnerability class. The work revealed that the Autoencoder algorithm can be used for environmental assessment, and the social media data has potential to effectively analyze the relationship between human activity and the environment. Although the study provided a novel perspective to estimate environmental vulnerability at a regional scale, it was necessary to develop a more comprehensive indicator system that can improve model performance in the future.