The concepts of sustainable agricultural development; The dimensions of the problem in the region; Agriculture, poverty, grwoth and sustainable; Considerations for a strategy of agricultural modernization with equity while conserving natural resources; Final remarks: opportunities and limitations.

The major dilemma facing Latin America is the need to exploit natural resources for economic development and the equally pressing need to find alternatives to prevailing destructive models of resource development. This study focuses in turn on Peruvian and Brazilian Amazonia, North-East Brazil and tropical Latin America as a whole, with chapters addressing human-induced changes in the neotropics, interactions and complementarity between tropical and non-tropical regions, and land-tenure strategies for the tropics.