This work brings a refined estimation of the land use change and derived CO₂ emissions associated with sugarcane cultivation, including changes in management practices and refined land-use carbon stocks, over the last two decades for Brazil’s center–south and north regions. The analysis was carried out at the rural property level, considering spatially explicit land conversion data. With the refinements, we found a net carbon removal of 9.8 TgCO₂∙yr⁻¹ in sugarcane cultivation areas in the 2000–2020 period, which was due to the expansion of sugarcane over poor quality pastures (55% of the gross removals), croplands (15%) and mosaic (14%) areas, and the transition from the conventional burned harvesting to unburned (16%). Moreover, 98.4% of expansion was over existent agricultural areas. Considering all the land use changes within sugarcane-producing rural properties, the net removal is even larger, of 17 TgCO₂∙yr⁻¹, which is due to vegetation recovery. This suggests that public policies and private control mechanisms might have been effective not only to control deforestation but also to induce carbon removals associated with sugarcane cultivation. These results indicate sugarcane production system and derived products as contributors to net carbon removals in the land sector in Brazil and should be considered for both bioenergy and agricultural sustainability evaluation.

Corn is Brazil’s second-most cultivated crop (21 Mha). Second-crop corn (SCC) represents 80% of this area and accounts for 8% of global production, making it a promising feedstock for food, feed, and biofuels with reduced land-use change (LUC) pressure. Assessing the net CO₂ balance (NCB) from direct LUC (dLUC) and soil management practices (SMP) is essential to quantify its decarbonization potential. This study provides the first national-level mapping of SCC in Brazil for 2023, including land-use/-cover transitions over the previous 20 and 10 years and associated NCB. SCC expansion over natural vegetation declined from 13% (2003–2023) to 3.6% (2013–2023). The 20-year dLUC NCB ranged from 0.6 to 0.9 t CO ₂ ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹, below published values. SMP contributed −0.1 to −0.2 t CO ₂ ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹, offsetting ~20% of dLUC. Combined dLUC+SMP NCB for SCC ethanol ranged from 2.3 to 5.3 and 0.3 to 1.5 g CO ₂ MJ⁻¹ for the respective periods.