Small forests, big impacts.

There is a tendency in the debate about planted forests to focus attention on large, continuous areas, companies in the sector, or aggregate statistics. This approach, while important, leaves aside a significant part of the rural landscape of southern Brazil: smallholdings where planted forests are not the main activity, but a component of the production system.

On tobacco-producing properties, this presence is concrete. These are relatively small areas, distributed among family units, totaling approximately 82 hectares in Rio Grande do Sul and approximately 156 hectares in the Southern Region.

What is striking, from a technical point of view, is not only the accumulated volume, but the fact that these forests exist within systems that are already intensively used. On properties with less than 15 hectares, on average, the decision to maintain planted forest means sharing space with crops, livestock, and food production. Even so, this choice persists over time.

The incentive for reforestation, structured since the 1970s, has helped to consolidate this scenario. Today, according to Afubra, almost a quarter of the area of ​​the properties is linked to conservation and forest vegetation, including native forest and planted forests.

In the case of tobacco producers, planted forests are not limited to an environmental asset or a store of future value. They fulfill a direct function in the present: they provide biomass for curing tobacco. This use, consolidated over decades, has structured a dynamic in which part of the energy needed for the production process is generated within the property itself. This changes the way planted forests are viewed, which cease to be merely a traditional forestry component and become integrated into the productive logic of the property.

There is also an economic effect that doesn't always appear when the analysis is limited to the final product. When these areas are converted into production value, the result is significant. More than the number itself, the central point lies in the origin of this value: a base formed by thousands of family farms, without large concentrated structures, but with continuous productive decisions over time.

This set of choices is not random. It is part of a structured model of productive organization—the Integrated Tobacco Production System—which articulates technical assistance, production planning, and diversification of activities within the property. It is in this arrangement that the planted forest ceases to be an isolated element and becomes part of a broader strategy for sustainable land use and income generation in rural areas.

*Per Fernanda Viana Bender, technical advisor for SindiTabaco and agricultural engineer.