In a context of extensive discussion about the occupation of agricultural areas in Brazil, the contribution of the present study is to analyze changes in use of land in the 558 Brazilian microregions from 1990-2016 as the objective of verifying agricultural activities that most won or lost area and identify the main factors that fueled the agricultural production of the country during the period. We analyzed 35 permanent and 33 temporary cultures using the Shift-share method, dividing the growth of each activity into five effects: yield, geographic location and area, the latter being subdivided into scale and substitution. The total harvested area grew 49.05%, from 50.5 to 75.3 million hectares. In the permanent activities there was 18.90% and temporary activities increased by 60.01%. Growth in the area of temporary crops was due to the expansion of agricultural frontier, as well as to the incorporation of previously occupied areas by permanent crops. The only two cultures, with positive substitution effects, were sugarcane and soybeans, which together were responsible for incorporating 96.14% of the entire area yielded by other activities. Coffee, orange, cassava, wheat, rice, beans, cotton and maize had a negative substitution effect, yielding 85.98% of area incorporated by other cultures. Acknowledgement :