The integration crop-livestock systems (iCL) may provide a number of benefits, such as the restoration of degraded pas-turelands, improvement on the physical, chemical and biological soil attributes, reduction of greenhouse gases emissions, scope economies and rural income diversification. But why the adoption of iCL is still very low? The paper recently published by Marcelo Carrer (UFSCar), Alexandre Gori Maia (UNICAMP), MarcelaVinholis (Embrapa) and Hildo Meirelles de Souza (UFSCar) at the journal Land Use Policy highligths how the provision of subsidized rural credit may be key to the adoption of more sustainable agriculture practices.

The authors analyzed a sample of cattle farmers in the state of São Paulo - Brazil and concluded that the access to rural credit incrased by 37.5 the probability of iCL adoption. But this relation is not unidiretional, because  the adoption of these systems also involves investments in fixed capital and increases in operational costs, which create additional demand for rural credit. In this respect, the supply of subsidized rural credit seems to be essential for the diffusion of more sustainable agricultural systems in the short term.