An outlook on the future of Brazilian agriculture: how farming students of Tocantins perceive sustainability in the Cerrado

In the Brazilian Cerrado, the land-use change caused by the expansion and intensification of agribusiness farming has led to dramatic socio-environmental problems. To foster sustainable development, Brazilian farming students have to learn about land use according to the Sustainable Development Goals and how to implement them on their home farm and future workplace. Through a questionnaire-based survey, our study explored the perceptions of 128 students at the Family Farming High School of Porto Nacional on the sustainability of farming systems in the Cerrado of Tocantins. We analyzed the effectiveness of the school in teaching sustainability, the students’ occupational preferences and perspectives, and their sentiment about three common farming systems in the Cerrado of Tocantins, i.e., agribusiness, family farming, and agroecological farming, and their opinion on the business relationships among the three systems. Even though our study confirmed the effectiveness of school-work alternation models in transferring sustainability practices from school to home farms, it also revealed farming students’ poor understanding of the systemic definition of sustainability. Students defined sustainable and unsustainable farms with different perspectives and evaluation criteria, most of them referring to environmental indicators such as the way materials are used, whether the natural environment is protected, and whether biodiversity is preserved on the farm. There is a discrepancy between students’ occupational preference and their prevalent sentiment about family farming, agribusiness, and agroecological farming. While more than half of them would accept to work on an agribusiness farm, significantly more students have a positive sentiment in favor of family farming and agroecological farming than agribusiness farming. The three farming systems, however, are not perceived as contending or isolated but as partnering businesses, featuring low competition and high cooperation rates. Our study contributes to a broader appreciation of the Brazilian students’ perception of farming sustainability in the Cerrado of Tocantins and helps environmental education programs improve their effectiveness in transferring sustainability.