agriculture in brazil essay

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15 Brazil’s Agricultural Modernization and Embrapa

Geraldo B. Martha Jr., Researcher, Secretariat of International Relations, Embrapa, Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture

Eliseu Alves, former President and current Presidential Advisor, Embrapa, Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture

• Published: 08 August 2018
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Brazilian agriculture reinvented itself by targeting a science-based approach. Embrapa, the research arm of the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, is recognized as key in this process. A set of characteristics—public corporation model; scale of operation at national level; spatial decentralization; specialized research units; strong focus in human capital; a vision of an agriculture based on science and technology—explains Embrapa’s strength and achievements. Looking ahead, agricultural production needs to increase at least at the same pace of demand. Otherwise, prices will increase, and the poor will suffer the greatest impact. One of the greatest barriers to ensure modern technology will be more broadly and effectively adopted is market imperfection, which alters relative prices and the returns to investment in technologies. Reducing market imperfections is a necessary condition for expanding production in a more inclusive way, and to increase the effectiveness of policies targeting technology adoption by farmers.

15.1. Introduction

For most of the twentieth century, Brazilian agriculture was considered an inefficient, backward sector. Food crises repeatedly occurred up to the 1970s, and until the following decade Brazil depended heavily on imports to ensure food security for its people. Macroeconomic pressures arising from food inflation were a persistent problem. It was against all odds, then, that Brazilian agriculture was able to reinvent itself and in a period of only one generation—from the 1970s to the 2000s—become the sole agricultural power in the tropics. As of today, among individual countries Brazil comes second only to the United States in the world’s agricultural trade.

Brazil’s ability to leave behind traditional agriculture, based on land area expansion and on limited use of modern inputs, was of course decisive in the production expansion of agriculture in the country following the 1970s, and especially following the 1990s. Furthermore, in recent decades a considerable range of institutional innovations and policies have played a decisive role in modernizing the agricultural sector. In this chapter, however, we focus on a particularly key decision that enabled that achievement, namely the country’s commitment, constancy of purpose, and perseverance during the past 40–50 years toward an agriculture based on science.

During this period, Brazil eventually became self-sufficient in food production. As food production increased over time at higher rates than food demand, real food prices for consumers significantly decreased. Given Brazil’s central role in the world’s agriculture, such a trajectory additionally contributed to global food security. The fact that, in the aggregate, agricultural production grew predominantly through yield increases rather than area expansion also decisively contributed to the generation of impressive land-saving effects that allowed millions of hectares to be spared from cultivation over the past 60 years.

As argued influentially in the work of Douglass North (e.g., 2006, viii), history matters not only because one can learn from the past, but because present and future choices are shaped by past decisions and the continuity of society’s institutions. Thus, on the one hand, the story of the development and consolidation of a science-based agriculture in Brazil has generated intense interest from other developing countries and international organizations. In particular, they wish to learn from the Brazilian experience of developing an efficient, competitive, and sustainable agriculture in the tropical belt in such a short period of time. However, on the other hand, a past full of achievements is no guarantee for a successful future. In spite of the considerable progress observed in Brazilian agriculture, it is necessary to move even further along the path of sustainability, and to solve localized problems relating to agricultural production and to environmental and social claims.

In considering future perspectives for Brazilian agriculture, the multifaceted role that agriculture will play in the coming decades is clear, as is its increasing reliance on knowledge, technologies, and innovation ( Embrapa 2014 ). A central challenge in the near future for a science-based agriculture is to clearly and objectively identify the sequence of relevant problems that need to be solved by research to increase society’s welfare ( Martha Jr. et al. 2012a ).

Keeping these perspectives in mind, the chapter discusses three topics in depth. The following section (15.2) surveys the origins of the modernization of agriculture in Brazil. We explore in detail the role of industrialization and key policies as drivers for the modernization of the agricultural sector, especially from the 1970s on. In section 15.3 we focus on the science-generating dimension of Brazil’s agriculture. We consider the relevance of Brazil’s National Agricultural Research System, and then concentrate more specifically on Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation). We review and expand upon key points previously presented in other studies ( Alves 2010 ; Lopes and Martha Jr. 2016 ; Martha Jr. et al. 2012a ; Pereira et al. 2012 ). In section 15.4 we present selected achievements of Brazilian agriculture and discuss its efficiency in terms of land productivity and total factor productivity. In the final section (15.5) we conclude by reviewing concisely several future challenges facing Brazilian agriculture, from both demand- and supply-side perspectives. We bring to the discussion an insistence on the importance of expanding science generation in Brazil to face these challenges, and of aiming to alleviate market imperfections to ensure that modern technology can be effectively adopted in a more inclusive way in farms across the country.

15.2. The Origins of Agricultural Modernization in Brazil

The importance of the agricultural sector for the Brazilian economy dates back to the colonial period of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries; until the first decades of the twentieth century, the Brazilian economy depended heavily on agriculture ( Baer 2008 ; Furtado 2005 ), which at that time mostly relied on the factors of land and labor to increase production.

Coffee and some other agricultural commodities (rubber, cocoa, cotton) destined for foreign markets accounted for over 55% of exports until the 1960s ( Thorp 1998 ). Such an externally oriented approach, focused on a few agricultural products, ultimately translated into short-lived periods of boom and bust ( Baer 2008 ). As a consequence, Brazil repeatedly faced volatile economic growth and considerable external vulnerability in this period ( Gremaud et al. 2004 ).

For much of Brazil’s history, the agricultural sector was identified as backward, because it was trapped into a low-productivity approach, heavily dependent on area expansion to increase food production. 1 However, the availability of more fertile sites for agriculture in the South and Southeast regions was already becoming low in the 1960s. Meanwhile, the expansion to the Central-West region at that time found the acidic, low-fertility soils of the Brazilian savannah ( Cerrado ) to be a major barrier to increasing food production.

Such a scenario is easily illustrated by the evolution of the per capita production of major grains and oilseeds (corn, rice, beans, wheat, and soybean) in Brazil since the 1950s. 2 The figures changed little from 1950 to 1970 (1950: 214 kg per capita; 1960: 201 kg per capita; 1970: 247 kg per capita). 3 More consistent increases in food availability were evident only in the estimates for 1980 (336 kg per capita) and 1990 (368 kg per capita). It is worth noting that Brazil received food donations from abroad until the 1960s, and up until the 1980s the country was still one of the world’s largest food importers. 4

15.2.1. An Agricultural Modernization Process Driven by the Import-Substitution Industrialization Strategy

The shift toward the modernization of Brazilian agriculture had its origins in the import-substitution industrialization strategy adopted from the 1950s–1960s to the early 1980s ( Alves et al. 2008 ; Pereira et al. 2012 ). Until the mid-1980s, the industrial sector was granted a series of advantages that strongly discriminated against agriculture. The ambitious import-substitution industrialization policy was based on exchange controls, on a multiple exchange-rate system to support capital goods imports, and on subsidized interest rates for loans for the capital goods industry ( Alves and Pastore 1978 ; Baer 2008 ; Gremaud et al. 2004 ).

This economic policy further promoted consumer goods imports and investments in energy and transport infrastructure ( Gremaud et al. 2004 ; Baer 2008 ). The investments in federal and state highway systems were essential to support agricultural production expansion, in terms of an increased crop area (from the 1950s to 1970s–1980s) and, later, in terms of higher productivity levels (transport of modern inputs). And, of course, transport infrastructure played a pivotal role in moving the increased agricultural production to markets in the cities. Other government priorities for investments included urban infrastructure, housing and health, and salary protection. As far as possible, food prices were kept artificially low to avoid pressure on urban salaries in this phase ( Alves and Pastore 1978 ; Baer 2008 ; Gremaud et al. 2004 ).

Politically, the distorting industrialization policy shifted power from rural areas to cities, transforming Brazil into a progressively urban society ( Dias and Amaral 2000 ), with an accelerated rural-urban migration process starting in the 1950s. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the urban population percentage in Brazil in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1991, 2000, and 2010 was 45.1%, 56.0%, 67.7%, 75.5%, 81.2%, and 84.4%, respectively. In the span of only 30 years the rural population shrank from 55% of the total population in 1960 to 23% in 1991 ( IBGE 2011 ).

Migration from rural to urban areas was very intense from the 1960s to the 1980s, but then lost impetus after the 1990s. This was in part because the rural-urbanization cycle was almost complete in the South, Southeast, and Midwest regions, but also because low economic growth rates in Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s weakened the attractiveness of cities ( Alves et al. 2008 ).

15.2.2. Key Policies in the Modernization of Brazilian Agriculture

Until at least the 1950s, most agricultural policy in Brazil was aimed at expanding the agricultural frontier. However, agricultural policy during the import-substitution industrialization policy period was subordinated to the overriding goal of industrialization ( Baer 2008 ).

The persistent food supply crisis throughout the 1960s and the early 1970s led to the formulation of several hypotheses aiming to explain the lack of a more substantial increase in productivity, and intending to guide more efficient policy approaches. Four main lines of reasoning can be identified: (1) the need for a profound agrarian reform ( Cline 1970 ); (2) a recognition that the agricultural problem reflected a combination of domestic and export price policies, labor-saving industrialization, and a lack of agricultural research ( Schuh 1974 ); (3) the idea of insufficient demand (i.e., that the inelastic nature of own-price and income elasticities for agricultural products implied that small increases in supply determined a more significant reduction in prices, which in turn prevented the diffusion of the modernization process) ( Paiva 1975 ; Pastore et al. 1976 ; Pastore and Barros 1976 ; Ryff 1976 ); and (4) Hayami and Ruttan’s induced innovation theory of 1971 ( Hayami and Ruttan 1985 ), suggesting that the prolonged surplus of land and labor in Brazilian agriculture hampered the widespread modernization of the sector ( Pastore et al. 1976 ; Schuh 1974 ).

Three policies turned out to play a central role in the agricultural modernization process: (1) rural credit, mainly for capital goods and the purchasing of modern inputs; (2) rural extension; and (3) support of agricultural research.

15.2.2.1. Rural Credit

In 1965 the Brazilian government established the National Rural Credit Program, which provided loans to finance modern agricultural inputs, such as improved seeds and fertilizers, and machinery and equipment, such as tractors. Interest rates were subsidized, particularly from the late 1960s to 1985 ( Coelho 2001 ). Rural credit averaged R$.153–154 billion per year from 1969 to 1985; R$76.40 billion per year from 1986 to 2000; and R$113.60 billion per year from 2001 to 2015. 5

The role of rural credit in the modernization of Brazilian agriculture in the 1970s and the 1980s, which helped to foster modern production inputs, machinery, and equipment adoption, was remarkable. For example, apparent fertilizer consumption (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) in Brazilian agriculture averaged only 146,091 metric tons per year from 1950 to 1964. This more than doubled in 1965–1969, reaching an average of 343,668 metric tons per year. The truly great increase in fertilizer consumption, however, came in the 1969–1985 period, in which an average of 1,669,559 metric tons of fertilizer per year was registered. 6

The stock of tractors in Brazilian farms also experienced profound changes in the 1970s and 1980s. The number of tractors was 165,870 in 1970, but grew at an astonishing rate of 9.70% per year up to 1985, reaching 665,280 units. Such an accelerated mechanization process in the 1970–1985 period—from an estimated 241 hectares of cropland per tractor, to 92 hectares of cropland per tractor—was essential to the development of agriculture in the Cerrado . 7

15.2.2.2. Rural Extension

Until the early 1970s, Brazilian policymakers emphasized rural extension and neglected efforts in agricultural research, their rationale being that a vast array of technologies was already available for adoption. Fostering public and private extension services, for example, by connecting them to the emerging rural credit policy, would theoretically solve the agricultural problem. By the early 1970s, empirical evidence proved that this hypothesis was false. Indeed, the example previously discussed concerning the stagnant per capita production of major grains and oilseeds from 1950 to 1970 reinforces this argument.

The belief that strengthening human capital was key to better utilizing available resources and to increasing the impact of the investments made in capital goods and modern inputs was, of course, in the right direction. The flaw emerged in not recognizing that agricultural problems—and the demands posed to the sector—were dynamic rather than static.

A successful strategy would, of course, embrace a robust research system to continuously generate knowledge and technology to be transferred to extension services that, in turn, would be better positioned to support a sustained innovation process at the farm level. This condition reflected the fact that the stock of knowledge and technology positively responds to the accumulated experience of farmers and to their ability to import technologies and adapt them to specific conditions. However, this process has limited chances of success when very different environments (or ones experiencing fast-changing conditions)—such as the Cerrado as against Brazil’s Southeast and South regions—are considered. In such cases, problems can only be solved through the continuous generation of new knowledge and technologies (i.e., through science-based approaches) ( Alves 1987 ).

15.2.2.3. Agricultural Research

In 1812, King Dom João VI of Portugal recommended the creation of an applied agricultural course in the state of Bahia. In 1814, an agricultural course was established in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and by the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, several initiatives to promote the teaching and diffusion of applied knowledge in agriculture were established. The success of such initiatives was variable, meaning that some of them perpetuated and strengthened over the decades, such as the Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz, from 1901, and the Escola Superior de Agricultura de Lavras, from 1908, while others were short-lived. A greater effort to structure and develop agricultural colleges in Brazil took place in the first half of the twentieth century.

In 1887, the Instituto Agronômico de Campinas was created. Its influential results for agriculture helped to shape and eventually to consolidate the research initiative at the Ministry of Agriculture by 1938. After several revisions, the research-driven approach in Brazilian agriculture experienced a very important milestone in 1972, when the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture commissioned a team of experts with the bold assignment of suggesting how the government could structure a vibrant and efficient agricultural research system in the country. The resulting report—later known as the “black book” because of the color of its cover ( Embrapa 2006 )—was the cornerstone for establishing the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) in 1973, 8 and for strengthening the web of agricultural research in the country.

Embrapa was designed to serve as the research arm of the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, with a nationwide mandate. At that time, several state governments also established agricultural research organizations. Embrapa was assigned the additional mission of coordinating the Brazilian Agricultural Research System, which included state agricultural research organizations, universities, and agricultural colleges, 9 and Embrapa itself. In the following decades, Embrapa became one of the largest agricultural research networks in the tropical world ( Lopes 2012 ; Pastore and Alves 1976 ).

In summary, the development of modern agriculture in Brazil was initially prompted by the import substitution industrialization policy from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. The accelerated growth in population, urbanization, and per capita income at that time posed a clear and strong demand for the agricultural sector. The expansion of agricultural output enabled larger export volumes, as well as more diverse exports, 10 which in turn provided the means to finance imports of technology and capital goods for the emerging national industry. The increased opportunity cost of labor for farmers and the sustained migration from rural areas to cities additionally led to a favorable environment for agricultural growth and modernization ( Alves and Pastore 1978 ). A science-based approach, based on the continuous generation of new knowledge and technologies, played a crucial role in transforming Brazilian agriculture from mid-1970s on.

15.3. The Emergence of an Era of Science-Based Agriculture in Brazil

15.3.1. the brazilian national agricultural research system.

In the early 1970s, macroeconomic pressure coexisted with a strong appreciation among policymakers of the need to reform Brazil’s public agricultural research. Brazil improved its research structure and capacity substantially by developing a two-tier system of federal and state-based agencies, called the National Agricultural Research System (SNPA) ( Lopes 2012 ).

Over the decades, the SNPA has been responsible for designing, implementing, developing, and promoting a wide array of knowledge and technology to contribute to innovation in agricultural value chains. As discussed by Beintema et al. (2001) , the implementation of the SNPA concept led to the strengthening of Brazil’s agricultural research and development (R&D) capacity through improved infrastructure, enhancement of human resources, implementation of appropriate management mechanisms, and application of support policies on a national scale.

The financial support of the Brazilian government to the SNPA was, of course, of fundamental importance. The accumulated level of investments in public agricultural R&D from 1981 to 2013 totaled US$61.6 billion (an average of approximately US$1.9 billion per year). 11 In the 1980s, the average intensity of agricultural R&D investments was 1.21% of the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP), but in the past 25 years this figure has increased by around 50%, and averaged 1.91% of the agricultural GDP in the 1990s, and 1.75% of the agricultural GDP from 2001 to 2013. 12

Embrapa is the largest component of the SNPA system. As of 2013, Embrapa represented 42% of the SNPA’s research capacity, followed by the state research organizations (29%), agricultural colleges (26%), and nonprofit organizations (3%). The full-time research equivalent in 2013 (FTE: 5,869.4) was composed of 72.5% of researchers with PhD qualifications, 21.5% with MSc, and 6.0% with BSc. Almost 60% of those researchers were concentrated in the 41–60-year-old cohort ( Flaherty et al. 2016 ).

15.3.2. Embrapa

From the beginning, Embrapa was conceived as having the clear and important goal of structuring a vibrant and efficient agricultural research system in the country ( Embrapa 2006 ). 13 In retrospect, it is now evident that there was no single “silver bullet” explaining Embrapa’s success.

On the one hand, Embrapa was able to adjust itself to the evolving macro-economic and political environment. It was created at the right time, when conditions were favorable for its success. Perhaps if Embrapa had begun a few years earlier or later, it would not have been such a success. Over the decades, Embrapa was able to wisely read the signals of change and to build the necessary institutional flexibility to adjust and cope with a changing surrounding environment.

On the other hand, most of Embrapa’s strength comes from its excellent human resources. The ability of its teams to anticipate the “real-world” problems of Brazilian agriculture, and to respond promptly with the generation of knowledge and technologies relevant to a given context, coupled with a focus on science-based solutions and long-term commitment, provided Embrapa with the means to thrive and grow stronger over its history.

15.3.2.1. The Embrapa Model: A Public Corporation

Learning from approximately 40 years of experience in public research at the Ministry of Agriculture (e.g., the Departamento Nacional de Pesquisa Agropecuária) led to the organization of Embrapa, a federal agency under the Ministry of Agriculture, as a public corporation. This strategy was intended to release it from bureaucratic rules used in public administration, and thus to give it the flexibility to administer resources and personnel, to plan, to assess performance, to implement the budget, and to disseminate results, all in a transparent manner. By choosing private-sector rules for its employees (e.g., CLT; Consolidação das Leis do Trabalho), Embrapa gained flexibility in personnel administration, construction of careers—especially that of researchers—and in designing and implementing a personnel evaluation policy. Furthermore, as a public corporation, the relationship with the outside world and with the private sector would be easier.

15.3.2.2. The Embrapa Model: A Focused Research Approach

Embrapa’s success, at the national level, came to depend on its ability to understand a variety of problems and to present solutions accordingly—a considerable task considering Brazil’s continental size and diversity. The understanding was that Embrapa needed its own research network so that it could be directly responsible for its results, allowing it to become known and evaluated on its own merits. Once it was large, diverse, and decentralized, Embrapa would have the capability to represent the federal government in an area as important as agriculture and to receive priority both in the allocation of resources and with regard to institutional development ( Alves 2010 ). This model further allowed Embrapa to seek cooperation with universities, research institutes, private-sector companies, and overseas partners as equals. 14

Embrapa’s inception was founded on two major pillars: (1) a focused research model, and (2) a strong effort to develop and then continuously strengthen the capacity of its human resources.

Embrapa chose a decentralized territorial model. At the national level, the model requires strong interaction with decision-makers, at the level of the presidency of the Republic, Congress, and ministries. Regionally, Embrapa research units (“labs”) were distributed throughout the national territory and followed three major structures: (1) products (rice and beans, beef cattle, etc.); (2) resources ( Cerrado savannah, semi-arid, etc.); and (3) themes (environment, instrumentation, etc.).

By focusing on products, regions, and areas of fundamental importance for the development of Brazil, researchers gained a better sense of their responsibilities, minimizing ambiguities regarding goals and necessary actions. This model has also facilitated interaction with farmers and the public, 15 who could objectively and efficiently get specific information and results for their needs. More important, perhaps, are the strong ties of solidarity and the collective spirit in which employees are committed to being a winning and respectful team ( Alves 2010 ).

15.3.2.3. The Embrapa Model: Human Resources

A major determinant of the observed success of Embrapa has been the development and strengthening of its human resources. 16 In a first phase, Embrapa invested heavily in increasing the number of researchers, at an impressive rate of 5.8% per year, from 872 in 1974 to 2,146 researchers in 1990. In a subsequent phase, from 1990 to 2015, the rate of growth in the number of researchers was flat (e.g., 0.5% per year), resulting in 2,447 scientists.

Similarly impressive has been the concurrent change in the profile of researchers that took place during this process. In 1974, researchers whose highest qualification was BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees represented 83%, 15.3%, and 1.7%, respectively. In 1990, 53.6% of researchers’ highest degree was an MSc degree, and 26.1% had a PhD degree. In 2015, only 0.7% of Embrapa’s researchers had only a BSc degree, while MSc was the highest degree held by 13.5%; the share of researchers with a PhD degree was 85.8%.

This major change in the composition of researchers’ qualifications clearly reflects the science-based approach pursued by Embrapa since its foundation. These scientists, working together with a competent staff of assistants and analysts 17 structured to support research, have played a pivotal role in leading the development of knowledge and technologies to back a powerful tropical agriculture based on science. Across geographic regions, there is an approximately equal distribution among Embrapa’s assistants, analysts, and researchers. However, the share of researchers with a PhD degree at Northern research units lags behind ( Martha Jr. et al. 2012a ).

In summary, Embrapa has traditionally invested heavily in capacity building and strengthening, and has kept a strong postgraduate program throughout its existence. Another specific role of this “human capital policy” is to stimulate creativity with an environment that encourages coexistence and interaction among peers and different stakeholders. Embrapa needs to be prepared to receive, interpret, and internalize the signals coming from a complex society, as well as from the international market, since the needs for interaction will increasingly cross national borders. In particular, human capital is increasingly in demand in an economy that is becoming both technologically and organizationally more complex ( Sowell 2015 ), as is the case with agriculture and its value chains.

15.3.2.4. The Embrapa Model: International Cooperation Is Key

Empirical evidence has shown that the interaction between people with different heritages in terms of geographical, cultural, social, and political factors is essential in fostering the development of knowledge and technology that ultimately supports sustained innovation flows ( Sowell 2015 ). As such, the interaction between public and private agricultural research organizations should not be solely within a country’s borders. International partnerships are necessary to more rapidly advance the generation of basic and applied knowledge and technologies in support to the innovation process.

Embrapa understood the lesson of the importance of international cooperation from its beginning in the early 1970s. This openness to international cooperation enabled Embrapa ( Alves 2010 ) (a) to create a positive image abroad, thus facilitating relationships with donors, universities, and research organizations in other countries. This, in turn, was positively perceived by the federal government, which responded with increased support; (b) to have an international dimension in terms of the quality of research and in measuring scientists’ performance; (c) to help Brazil, as an instrument of foreign policy; (d) to understand that in a globalized world, science is also globalized and that it is crucial for its very existence to improve the mechanisms of interaction with other countries, universities, funding bodies, broader types of organizations, and, of course, other scientists.

Embrapa sent abroad several hundred professionals to be trained, mostly in the United States, 18 and to a lesser extent in the United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia. Their performance helped Embrapa to form important bridges with the academic world abroad. Moreover, projects financed by international agencies were important in better equipping Embrapa and in helping it to finance training programs abroad. Because these activities were well implemented and conducted, they helped to solidify the image of Embrapa as a serious and responsible corporation.

International scientific cooperation brings several benefits to partner countries: (1) it opens up new possibilities for the development and application of knowledge and innovation about agricultural and related value chains; (2) costs of research can be reduced when synergies are identified, built, and consolidated; and (3) it reduces the time required for the appropriation of knowledge and/or cutting-edge technologies by the productive sector, which ultimately contributes to maintaining its competitiveness and sustainability.

In the mid-1990s, Embrapa made another strategic decision: to further foster international scientific cooperation by establishing the Embrapa Labex Program, Embrapa’s Virtual Laboratory Abroad. Labex’s mission is to promote and develop international scientific cooperation opportunities in strategic areas and themes, generally at the frontier of knowledge, and to monitor science, innovative technologies, and innovation in agriculture, anticipating potential risks and opportunities. With Labex, there are opportunities to exchange knowledge and to engage senior scientists, allowing them to collaborate on mutually beneficial research in priority areas. Among other things, such as expanded networking and funding possibilities, this strategy has reduced time and cost in the development of research. Experiences through the Embrapa Labex Program came from the United States, Europe, and Asia. 19

The success of Brazilian agriculture motivates countries in the tropical belt to seek information and support for technology transfer from Embrapa. Besides the traditional instruments of support, Embrapa has decided to have researchers in several tropical countries, aiming to transfer knowledge and technology in tropical agriculture and to look for opportunities in licensing Embrapa’s technology. The goal is both to benefit the development of sustainable and competitive agriculture in recipient countries and to help them find sound solutions to improve food security for their people ( Alves 2010 ).

Both the Labex model—cooperating in research programs with developed countries—and the structures for transferring technologies to developing countries are flexible models that can be expanded with new scientists or through occasional transfers of scientists among countries, according to the interests of Embrapa.

15.3.2.5. The Embrapa Model: The Continued Support of the Brazilian Government

During its first decade or so of existence, Embrapa, in spite of its bold and modern design, was essentially a promise; the risk of a lack of actual achievements was always present.

Embrapa’s strategy considered the importance of a research portfolio capable of providing short-term outputs while more long-term research, with more significant expected outcomes, was underway. Embrapa gave special attention to the dissemination of existing results, including through an interaction with the emerging media targeting issues in farming. The support coming from farmers and their associations, as well as from the media, helped Embrapa to cultivate a favorable image in the eyes of both the public and government.

Without federal government support, Embrapa would not have been possible. During 1974–1985, for example, huge investments were made in infrastructure, operational costs, and the training of personnel: around R$17.2 billion in 2016 values.

Such investments were based on the promise that Embrapa was central for the modernization of Brazilian agriculture. However, crucially, from the early 1980s onward, as research efforts began to bear fruit, Embrapa was no longer merely a promise, and its success explains the government’s continued investments.

The support of the Brazilian government has continued through Embrapa’s history. In 2016 values, it averaged R$0.98 billion in the 1970s, R$1.90 billion in the 1980s, R$2.21 billion in the 1990s, and R$2.46 billion from the first decade of the 2000s on. Embrapa’s spending, in its earlier years, focused on the Central-West region. This stemmed from the need to incorporate the Cerrado into the productive process. While the share in spending for research units in the North, South, and Southeast regions were more or less in balance in the last four decades, the money directed to Northeast units as a share of total spending increased in the past decade ( Martha Jr. et al. 2012a ).

Such a relative increase in the share of spending in the Northeast is consistent with the fact that the region accounts for 47.4% of the farms and 47.1% of the rural population. The annual income per farm in the region (R$11,578.44) represents only 41% of Brazil’s average (R$27,789.50), clearly indicating the need for greater assistance ( Alves and Rocha 2010 ). The increasing importance of the environmental agenda, in light of the fact that land-use changes, especially in the Amazon, are the main factor responsible for greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil, suggests that the spending share directed to research units in the North region will eventually increase as well.

15.3.2.6. The Embrapa Model: Science-Policy Links

Politicians represent Brazilian society, and as such it is obviously important that they play an active role in Embrapa’s operation with respect to directions, priorities for research, and institutional development. Furthermore, in a world that reveals itself as increasingly more complex and technology driven, the interaction with politicians is important as a means to bring scientific solutions to the political decision-making process.

Embrapa has historically had a close working relationship with politicians, but guided by a commitment to the country’s interests rather than to particular political forces; a degree of independence from politics has been a contributor to Embrapa’s success, resulting in a widely recognized impression of transparency. Hiring researchers and employees through an open public selection process and, likewise, opening positions at the head of research units based on open calls are instruments that have promoted a positive coexistence with politicians ( Alves 2010 ).

15.3.2.7. Embrapa’s 2014–2034 Vision

In recent decades Embrapa has implemented several managerial innovations aiming to benefit Brazilian society through a sustained flow of high-quality research, knowledge, and technologies. In 2012, Embrapa implemented a model combining a portfolio (top-down) strategy with a project arrangement (bottom-up) strategy, to prioritize research themes of greatest relevance and strategic importance to Brazil. By the end of 2012, Embrapa had established its in-house think-tank, Agropensa (Embrapa’s Strategic Intelligence System). Agropensa led the process of exploring the “Vision 2014–2034: The Future of Technological Development of Brazilian Agriculture” ( Embrapa 2014 ). This document captured major drivers, challenges, and opportunities in agricultural value chains in Brazil and was a fundamental reference in Embrapa’s Sixth Master Plan, presented to the public toward the end of 2014 (Embrapa 2015).

As shown in Figure 15.1 , Embrapa’s Strategic Map begins, at the bottom, with inputs of strategic information and key references (“Bases for Action”). These, in turn, aim to support the agency’s decision-making process regarding its “macro-processes” such as human resources, international cooperation, and infrastructure for information and communication technology.

Embrapa’s strategic map, as presented at the VI Master Plan.

For example, the document “Vision 2014–2034” ( Embrapa 2014 ) identified that Brazilian comparative advantages may be strengthened along the entire agricultural value chain. The ample variety in the supply of biomass in the country offers real opportunities for the development of value chains based on high value-added materials and substances targeted for food, feed, flavors, and nonfood uses. Chemical-bio-catalytic processes lead to the development and use of microbial catalysts that directly convert raw materials into a range of products and chemical intermediates that can be subsequently converted into new products with a high value-added potential ( Embrapa 2014 ). Such a bioeconomy strategy may eventually boost the growth of associated capital goods industries, engineering services, and biomass suppliers in food, feed, chemistry, and pharmaceutical value chains (among others), creating opportunities for expanding higher-value-added exports.

The goal of the “Institutional Management Level” is to support overall “Research, Development and Innovation (RD&I) Management.” Taking the bioeconomy example again, key questions to be answered at the “Institutional Management Level” would include—although of course not be limited to—the following: What is the demand for human resources and international scientific cooperation? What is the financing necessary to support infrastructure, research, and technology transfer activities associated with such a bioeconomy strategy?

The RD&I production process is translated into “macro-themes” 20 that follow a value-chain approach, and cross-cutting themes, namely (a) family farming, organic and agro-ecological production; (b) management in agricultural value chains; and (c) improved communication with society. With such a strategy, Embrapa aims to be fully connected with “real-world problems.” The RD&I production process is thus designed to deliver to society outputs and outcomes that contribute mainly within five major “Impact Axes”: (1) advances in sustainability; (2) strategic and competitive insertion into the bioeconomy; (3) contributions to public policies; (4) science-based agriculture to promote farmers’ inclusion and competitiveness in the economy, as well as poverty reduction; and (5) positioning at the frontier of knowledge.

15.3.2.8. Embrapa’s Payoff to Society

There is little doubt that the payoffs to agricultural R&D have been high over the past 60 years ( Alston et al. 1998 ; Avila et al. 2010 ; Pardey et al. 2006 ). The practice of conducting and presenting results from impact studies at Embrapa began in the early 1980s. The main motivation behind carrying out these studies was to demonstrate returns to the sizable investments made in Embrapa and its research units by the Brazilian government. Such impact studies centered on estimating economic surpluses generated by Embrapa’s technologies. Internal rates of return (IRR) were estimated, and averaged 25%–30%, ranging from 20% to 74% in several studies ( Avila et al. 2002 ). 21

Pardey et al. (2006) presented a detailed study evaluating the impact of soybean, dry beans, and rice varietal improvement at Embrapa as compared to non-Embrapa investments. In the aggregate, varietal improvement in these crops from 1981 to 2003 yielded benefits of US$14.8 billion (1999 prices). Attributing all of the benefits to Embrapa, the benefit-cost ratio would be 27 for upland rice, 15 for dry beans, and 149 for soybeans. Under alternative distribution rules, under which Embrapa was given partial credit for the varieties developed jointly with other partners, the ratios would drop to 5, 3, and 31, respectively.

At the regional level, Embrapa has assessed its impact from the 1970s to 1980s. While for Embrapa as a whole the registered internal rate of returns ranged from 34% to 41%, the internal rates of returns were comparatively smaller for the North, with 24% ( Kitamura et al. 1989 ), and for the Northeast, with 25% ( Santos et al. 1989 ), and were higher for the Midwest and the South, both with 43% ( Lanzer et al. 1989 ; Teixeira et al. 1990 ). In the 1990s, regional impact could be indirectly estimated through the research impacts in grain and oilseed varieties, because of the regional distribution of these crops in the country. For example, Evenson and Avila (1995) found that the internal rates of returns for soybean, corn, rice, and wheat were 40%, 58%, 37%, and 40%, respectively. These crops are mainly concentrated in the Central-South region.

There is, however, imprecise evidence regarding the impacts of agricultural research over a complex array of technologies. In part this reflects the difficulty of attributing adequate weights to benefits and costs among different agents involved in the process. Gasques et al. (2009) , looking at the more aggregated level, estimated that a 1% increase in Embrapa’s research expenditure increased agricultural total factor productivity (TFP) in Brazil by 0.2%.

In short, Embrapa is a case of successful institutional innovation in which its model allowed it to develop its own “personality,” leading Embrapa to be considered a unique example in the field of public research on the national and international scenes. From the outset, Embrapa has always pursued a results-oriented approach, based on solid science, which has facilitated its relationship with the government and has enabled it to gain public support.

Embrapa’s strengths and achievements are explained by a varied set of factors: a public corporation model of organization; a scale of operation at national level; spatial decentralization; specialized research units; a strong focus on capacity-building and strengthening of human resources; and a vision of an agriculture based on science and technology. Omit one of these critical factors, and most probably Brazilian agriculture would not be the success story that we know today ( Alves 2010 ).

Over the past four-plus decades, there have of course been a few challenges and crises for Embrapa. Generally, these arose from situations where some sort of interference represented a violation of Embrapa’s principles. However, such crises were generally overcome fairly rapidly and thus ultimately did not compromise Embrapa’s work ( Alves 2010 ). Given that Embrapa is an organization with the ambition of persisting for a long time into the future, serving both Brazil and the wider world, it is relevant to briefly address a few key challenges and shortcomings observed in past decades. These may provide insights for overcoming future situations.

One key issue is the need to constantly ensure that all teams at Embrapa understand and follow the Embrapa model, mission, and values. Embrapa’s success thus far has been to a great extent a consequence of its constancy of purpose and its long-term commitment. If such ingredients became somewhat weakened, Embrapa would encounter more difficulty in facing future challenges.

Still, from an internal perspective, one must consider that Embrapa’s strength comes from its excellent human resources. As such, keeping a high level of human capital capabilities, with the most up-to-date skills, is a necessary condition for facing future challenges and opportunities. Since Embrapa must be prepared for the unknown in a fast-changing future environment, it will need to further strengthen investment in human capital, probably to a level that is more than would be strictly necessary to accomplish immediate needs. In this context, strong training in basic sciences will be the key to providing the foundations to increase the efficiency of problem-solving (applied) research. This also indicates why it remains important that relationships and cooperation with universities and private research in Brazil and abroad be strengthened.

From an external viewpoint, two other issues merit highlighting. Embrapa must evolve with surrounding policies and must have a close relationship with politicians, always in the nation’s interests. However, historical evidence has clearly demonstrated the importance of maintaining Embrapa’s independence from politics. To that end, transparency is key, for example through measures such as open public selection processes at levels from analysts and researchers to executive-board positions, and by implementing strategies such as committees and councils to effectively capture politicians’, stake-holders’ and broader society’s needs and demands.

A final point is the ongoing importance of Embrapa’s connection to real-world problems, challenges, and opportunities, in order to continue its trajectory as a scientific organization driven by a results-oriented approach. The dynamics of Brazilian agriculture over the past four decades has determined a range of groups of farmers that need to be understood in order to be efficiently reached by Embrapa’s research. To highlight the two most different groups: one is less numerous but very well integrated into markets and value chains, and is responsible for the majority of achievements in Brazilian agriculture; at the other extreme is a group that is much more numerous but generally more isolated and poorly connected to markets and value chains. The latter group urgently needs solutions tailored to their problems. If that vast group of farmers were able to adequately adopt modern technologies—those already generated and those becoming available in the near future—a new breakthrough from a supply-side perspective will be observed in Brazilian agriculture. Facing these challenges—or, perhaps, taking up these opportunities—implies alleviating market imperfections so that the knowledge and technology generated by the research system might be more fully used by a far greater number of farmers.

15.4. Science-Based Agriculture Pays

15.4.1. the conquest of the brazilian cerrado.

In the early 1970s, Brazilian policymakers realized that the strategy of increasing food supply through the expansion of the total cultivated area and the adoption of practices of limited technological content should be thoroughly revised. 22 The subsistence-farming option was rejected, and a huge effort to transform traditional tropical agriculture toward one based on science and the pursuit of productivity gains, rather than area expansion, was initiated ( Alves et al. 2008 ; Martha Jr. et al. 2012a ).

The applied agricultural science developed by Embrapa, states’ agricultural research organizations, universities, and other public and private partners (in Brazil and abroad) lifted the constraints imposed by the climatic conditions of the tropics and the poor acidic soils of the Cerrado . New crop varieties adapted to low latitudes, the release of novel forage species, significant improvements in animal genetics and in the management and use of natural resources (soil, water), and the increased adoption of modern inputs (in addition to seeds) all provided the means for better and more fitted agricultural production systems. The intensification of agricultural mechanization, particularly for grain production, was also an important feature of the development of Brazilian agriculture ( Martha Jr. et al. 2012a ; Pereira et al. 2012 ).

Changing the production environment to take full advantage of the Cerrado ’s potential was thus perceived as a strategy to be explored in order that the enterprise would be competitive with traditional production regions in the country. The virtuous cycle of expanded and improved tropical agriculture research strengthened the innovation flow as new science-based technologies fueled the extension service and ultimately reached farmers in the following decades. The innovation flow generated by this approach was backed by agricultural and more general public policies, and as a whole has made it possible for Brazilian agriculture to be transformed and to present high-impact outcomes ( Lopes and Martha Jr. 2016 ).

15.4.2. The Sustainability of Brazilian Agriculture

The various dimensions of sustainability—technical, economic, social, environmental—have strong interdependent linkages and, ideally, should be met simultaneously. Focusing on a solitary dimension, such as the economic or environmental aspects, will not reflect the multiple dimensions of sustainability. Instead of such a limited view, agricultural production systems should design strategies that yield win-win situations, that is, simultaneous gains in all sustainability dimensions. When this ideal condition is not an option, small loss/big gain scenarios should be targeted.

In Table 15.1 we summarize the evolution in productivity for major crops and beef cattle over the past six decades. From 1950 to 1970, yields were stagnant for corn, wheat, rice, and beef. Yields improved for sugarcane, and especially for soybean, but actually decreased for beans. Significant improvements were observed thereafter, especially from the mid-1990s on. In the past 60 years, the productivity increase in Brazilian agriculture has ranged from two to nearly five times the levels registered in 1950.

An outstanding benefit to the environmental dimension of sustainability arising from land productivity gains in Brazilian agriculture is the so called land-saving effects, that is, the area of land left uncultivated due to technological progress increasing agricultural output per unit of area instead. In the past 15 years, the sizable productivity gains in pastoral systems allowed a significant acreage of pasture area to be freed up and thus to accommodate the expansion of crops, mainly soybean and sugarcane, effectively minimizing direct and indirect pressures on native ecosystems.

Indeed, in the 1950–2016 period, productivity gains resulting from increased technology adoption in crops (rice, beans, maize, soybean, wheat, sugarcane) and beef production supported a land-saving effect of over 680 million hectares ( Martha Jr. et al. 2012b ; Martha Jr. 2016 ). This virtuous growth path in Brazilian agriculture explains how the country can be one of the world’s top agricultural producers while maintaining more than 60% of its territory untouched. 23

The more widespread adoption of technologies such as integrated crop-livestock systems, no-till planting, recovery of degraded areas, planting of commercial forests, biological nitrogen fixation, and animal waste treatment will help to conserve natural resources (soil, water, forests, and biodiversity) and deal with global warming adaptation and mitigation issues in agriculture. However, one must consider that the levels of incentives for Brazilian agriculture are low, 24 suggesting that farmers will strongly respond to market signals and will adopt technologies based on individual perceptions of benefits and costs.

From another point of view, such a low level of incentives for Brazilian agriculture reinforces further its very favorable input-to-output ratio for society. Furthermore, agricultural value chains have been the cornerstone for positive results in Brazilian balance of trade for the past 20 years. From 1997 to 2015, agricultural value chains had an accumulated surplus in the balance of trade (export–imports) of US$1,519.18 billion, compared to an accumulated value of US$555.68 billion for the aggregate of the Brazilian economy. 25

Evolution of relative real prices for a representative food basket, from January 1975 to September 2016 (January 1975 = 100).

Note : Prices for the state of São Paulo.

It is worth mentioning that over the past four decades, real food prices for Brazilian consumers decreased by roughly half, along with an associated lower price volatility (Figure 15.2 ). This huge drop in food prices reflected the fact that supply increased at a much faster rate than demand. Gains due to lower food prices benefit the entire population, but poor families in rural areas and in cities received the greatest share of these benefits, because the greatest share of the poor’s income is spent on food. Thus, reducing the price of food in effect works as an income transfer to the poor without the need for direct reallocation of income within society ( Pereira et al. 2012 ).

In addition to providing food security for the Brazilian population, such a condition allowed inflationary pressures to be alleviated. Due to the sizable associated income effect, especially for the poor, the decrease in real food prices additionally helped boost other sectors in the economy ( Martha Jr. et al. 2012a ; Pereira et al. 2012 ).

15.4.3. Total Factor Productivity in Brazilian Agriculture

Agricultural production systems are quite diverse. However, at a very aggregated level, it is probably reasonable to identify two broad types of system in terms of factors of production usage: (1) subsistence farming, which almost entirely does not use modern inputs (usage of rudimentary tools and methods for cultivation, and occasionally improved seeds); (2) commercial farming, which operates using modern inputs such as fertilizers, agrochemicals, improved seeds, machinery and equipment, and whose intensity of use on a per area basis varies largely. Weather conditions in terms of temperature, radiation, and rainfall change according to agro-climatic zones and obviously affect both systems. However, due to improvements in the production environment, commercial farming systems can be expected to cope better with such weather variations.

It turns out that as the amount of variable inputs and capital increases, farmers are progressively linked to markets, and land productivity, in spite of being very important, loses its capacity to almost solely account for net revenue. Put differently, land productivity response is a necessary but not sufficient condition for maximizing net revenue. Given that product prices and associated relative prices and terms of trade show ups and downs over time, “rational targets” for land productivity will vary conversely. Only under very particular conditions are maximum land productivities associated with maximum net revenues.

Hence, for more intensified agricultural systems, total factor productivity (TFP) becomes a better measurement of the system’s efficiency. Put simply, TFP is a productivity measure involving all the partial measures of productivity—land, labor, and capital—and defined as a ratio of inputs and outputs. TFP is, thus, the portion of the product not explained by the inputs.

The US Department of Agriculture–Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS) has provided TFP estimates for the world since 1961. 26 Based on this database and its assumptions and methods, TFP growth in Brazilian agriculture averaged 2.31% from 1961 to 2013. We did some further calculations and found that only 6.3% of the 158 of the countries surveyed had higher estimates. We also found that for the 1961–2013 period, 58.23% of these countries had a TFP growth lower than 1% per year, meaning that they have been unable to completely cover their costs. It is important to recognize, however, that progress is being made. From 1961 to 1970, 70.25% of countries had a TFP growth of less than 1% per year, but this distribution improved in the later period from 2001 to 2013, where 38.73% of the countries had a TFP lower than 1%. Similar results and trends were found by Gasques et al. (2010) .

15.5. Concluding Remarks

Future challenges on both the demand and the supply side remain substantial for the agricultural sector. On the demand side, the projected world population growth, from 7.35 billion in 2015 to 9.73 billion by 2050 (UNPD 2015), would add an additional demand of 0.80% per year to the agricultural sector. If the variation in per capita income is additionally considered, 27 demand would increase from 1.21% to 3.24% per year for products with income-elasticities ranging from 0.2 to 1.2, respectively. Nevertheless, huge differences among countries will pose distinct challenges from a regional perspective (Table 15.2 ).

On the supply side, production needs to increase at least at the same pace as demand, otherwise agricultural (food, feed, fiber, biofuels, and feedstock) prices will increase and the poor will suffer the greatest impact. There are two ways to increase output in agriculture: yield gains and area increase. They need not be mutually exclusive; in fact, what is generally seen in practice is a combination of both strategies.

Remarkable scientific advances are taking place in various fields of knowledge; genomics, nanotechnology, automation and robotics, information and communication technology. Taken together, these and other scientific advances, when properly appropriated by the private sector, will engender innovations that will boost the development of novel agricultural production systems with more potential to add value and to ensure increased productivity, safer and higher quality food, and other improvements to agricultural products and environmental services ( Lopes and Martha Jr. 2016 ).

The choice of a technology will vary according to the priority problem to be solved. Hayami and Ruttan (1985) argue that agricultural technologies can broadly focus on land- and/or labor-saving technologies. In the former group are biological and chemical technologies, while the latter includes mechanical technologies. So-called product-saving technologies, linked to reduced losses along the food chain, are additionally perceived as crucial to the future agricultural sector’s outcomes for society.

In this context, some key technologies that will be eventually supported include the following ( Pereira et al. 2012 ): new varieties and cultivars (adapted to non-native ecosystems, with a higher yield and quality in a given environmental set of conditions, resistance and/or tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, incorporation of biotechnology and nanotechnology tools); 28 new inputs (machinery and equipment, fertilizers and agrochemicals); and new agricultural practices and innovative production systems (providing greater efficiency in water and nutrient use, and accommodation of multiple crop cycles in a year).

Of course, the research system and the extension service must receive adequate financial support in order to sustain continuous gains in agricultural yields in farms. However, from a research viewpoint, a central future challenge, given the ample array of stakeholder pressures and funding possibilities, is clearly and objectively identifying the sequence of relevant problems to be solved by research in order to increase welfare in society ( Martha Jr. et al. 2012a ).

From a farmers’ perspective, the economic pressures dictating the intensification strategy will vary according to region and over time, but they are decisive in influencing the systems’ choices and productivity goals. The success of any given strategy will be strongly influenced by the relative prices and terms of trade in a given region. In the short term, sharp variations in the factor’s relative prices may hamper the adoption of capital-intensive technologies.

From society’s viewpoint—greatly strengthened after the 1990s—yield increase is the preferable strategy to expand agricultural production. In this case, land-saving (biochemical) technologies, associated with increased agricultural output per unit area should be targeted. More broadly, technology should focus on the development and/or adaptation of resource-saving technologies (for example, land, water, and nutrients) that protect the environment and use resources more efficiently. It is desirable that these novel technologies contribute to mitigating carbon emissions, and provide the necessary resilience to agricultural systems, under a green growth strategy ( Lopes and Martha Jr. 2016 ; Pereira et al. 2012 ).

Finally, for at least two decades, technology has been the main factor responsible for explaining income in Brazilian agriculture ( Alves al. 2013 ). At the aggregate level, the achievements of Brazilian agriculture are in some ways proof that technology was successfully diffused. However, the concentration of agricultural production in a few farms—27,300, concentrating 51.2% of the total gross income in agriculture—highlights an enormous challenge for the research system to more accurately translate generated knowledge and technologies in a clear and usable format that can be assimilated by the extension service and adopted by the vast majority of farmers ( Alves et al. 2012 ).

Thus, a breakthrough in Brazilian agriculture would come from a greater dissemination—and an effective implementation—of modern technologies by a significant number of farmers in the country. Alves et al. (2012) estimate that 54% of the 4.4 million farms that reported income in the 2006 Agricultural Census were able to remunerate all inputs, but only 500,000 establishments had income greater than 10 monthly minimum wages. There remain, therefore, about 2 million establishments with monthly income of up to 10 minimum wages that may find feasible solutions to their livelihood in the agricultural sector.

One of the greatest barriers to the effective adoption of modern technology in an inclusive way is market imperfection, which alters the relative prices for farmers and thus the return to investment in technologies. Market imperfection refers to market power concentration (monopoly, oligopoly, monopsony, and oligopsony) and to non-technological asymmetries (such as the availability of infrastructure and education) that restrict a more widespread assimilation of modern technologies. Examples would include higher collateral requirements for loans, and higher prices paid for inputs as against lower prices received by small farmers, who still do not have resources to pay for private technical assistance and thus rely greatly on public extension services. Therefore, from a political perspective, the reduction of market imperfections is a necessary condition for expanding agricultural production in a more inclusive way and for increasing the effectiveness of policies targeting the adoption of technology by farmers.

As a final thought, there is no future without science-based agriculture. In the coming decades, the world might expect from Brazilian agriculture innovations that will increase our current ability to understand and respond to present and future risks and challenges in diverse areas of knowledge in tropical and subtropical environments ( Embrapa 2014 ). In order to make such views a reality it is imperative to expand investments in human resources training. Capital restrictions embodied by the new technology are an outstanding deficiency, but they can be solved by credit policies, while the access to more complex machinery and equipment can be solved by amending the leasing legislation ( Alves 2008 ). Human capital remains the most severe restriction on the potential productive capacity of the agricultural sector, in that this form of restriction requires considerable time to overcome.

Increases in agricultural production result from increased area and/or increased productivity (e.g., yield). Generally, a combination of both of these two factors explains production levels over time. The higher the yields, the lower the demand for land for a given level of production.

As Connor et al. (2011) state, one way of roughly estimating food production needs might take the “Standard Nutritional Unit” as a starting point. A daily energy requirement of around 23 MJ per capita would translate into demand at the farm level of 8.4 GJ per capita, or an approximate annual demand of 500 kg of grain per person. This is sufficiently large—more than twice the necessary human intake of digestible energy—to accommodate diversity in diets, since portions of arable land can be given over to the production of fruits, vegetables, and animal protein rather than to grain. For a more in-depth analysis, we recognize that it would be necessary to further consider the balance of food exports and imports, but for the present discussion these estimates may suffice, given the sizable trends identified.

We estimated these values based on data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), for both agricultural production (agricultural census) and population (population census).

In the 1990s, and especially in the first decade of the 2000s, the food availability situation in Brazil changed dramatically, and by and large for the better. The amount of grain produced per capita jumped to 461 kg in 2000, and again to 730 kg per capita in 2010. As of 2016 this value is estimated at 867 kg of major grains and oilseeds produced per capita.

For these calculations we used the database from Brazil’s Central Bank ( www.bcb.gov.br/credito ), and adjusted them to constant R$ 2016 values (the deflator used was the IGP-DI provided by FGV; available at http://www14.fgv.br/novo_fgvdados/default.aspx ). Note that the more substantial increase in rural credit in the first decade of the 2000s and in the 2010s only became evident after 2007, particularly in the past five years.

Data from IBGE’s historical statistics; available at http://seculoxx.ibge.gov.br/economicas/tabelas-setoriais/agropecuaria . We further estimated that the average fertilizer consumption in croplands, assuming crops accounted for 90% of the total fertilizer usage, increased from 22 kg/ha/year in 1970, to 33 kg/ha/year in 1985. This change, while modest in absolute per hectare amounts, was probably a very important initial step for, during the following decades, transforming traditional agriculture in the Cerrado into a more modern and productive form.

Data from IBGE; available at http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/economia/agropecuaria/censoagro/2006_segunda_apuracao/default_tab_xls.shtm . In this example, we considered croplands accounting for 85% of the tractors, the remaining 15% distributed to other land-use alternatives such as pasture and forestry.

More precisely, Embrapa was created by federal law 5851, from December 1972, and effectively installed on April 26, 1973. When Embrapa was created, it incorporated the former research structure of the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, the Departamento Nacional de Pesquisa Agropecuária.

Today, federal and state universities conduct research at more than 100 agricultural sciences colleges and schools. However, only a few private universities carry out comprehensive agricultural research, and the nonprofit sector still plays a modest role in research ( Lopes 2012 ).

For example, by the end of the 1990s commodities were still important for Brazilian exports, but the two main products at that time—soybean and iron ore—represented 10% of total exports ( Thorp 1998 ).

Calculations made using ASTI-IFPRI’s database on agricultural research; available at www.asti.cgiar.org/data . These values are in constant 2011 PPP dollars.

Pardey et al. (2016) have recently analyzed the geographical distribution of agricultural R&D worldwide. Middle-income countries are increasingly accounting for a greater share of agricultural R&D, growing for instance from 28.8% of the world’s total in 1980 to 43.4% in 2011. Over the three-decade period from 1980 to 2011, high-income countries lagged behind middle-income countries (spending, respectively, US$19 billion and 22.2 billion in 2009 PPP dollars) in terms of the additional amount of investments made in agricultural research.

This section benefited greatly from previous papers by Alves (2010) and Martha Jr. et al. (2012a) . See also Embrapa (2006) , Lopes (2012) , Pereira et al. (2012) , and Lopes and Martha (2016) .

States’ responsibilities for agricultural research and the role of science generation at Agricultural Colleges were further strengthened in the 1980s with the consolidation of the National Agricultural Research System, under Embrapa’s leadership.

This research model constitutes an interesting way of identifying research priorities, a typical case of induced innovation. The theory of induced innovation ( Hayami and Ruttan 1985 ) emphasizes the interaction of farmers with researchers. This interaction indicates the priorities for research within public research institutions. For private research institutions, the market acts directly, otherwise the technology developed would not find buyers. In public research, the market influence is indirect. It creates, among farmers, demand for a certain type of technology, for example, land-saving technologies, and in response to that demand, farmers indicate their needs to researchers. Researchers, in turn, respond with the adaptation and/or generation of technologies that increase land productivity.

This discussion is based on data and reports provided by Embrapa’s Human Resources Department.

At Embrapa, assistants have a high school education, and analysts generally occupy Bachelor’s degree posts. A small percentage also hold Master’s degrees, and a handful hold PhDs.

Several factors contributed to the United States being the major destiny for young Embrapa scientists. The good relationship between the two countries, and the support of the US government and of American organizations (such as the Rockefeller and Ford foundations) played a fundamental role. Furthermore, the United States had been leading the expansion in the frontier of technology, innovation, and labor productivity in several areas of knowledge since 1870 ( Gordon 2016 ), and the country’s achievements in science-based agriculture over the previous 100 years were remarkable (Cochrane 1990). Additionally, the scale of agricultural enterprises in the two countries were somewhat comparable, and knowledge and technologies transferred to Brazil since the 1950s, especially and 1960s, were presenting a very positive response when properly managed.

Labex-USA was the first instance to be established. The US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) has hosted Labex-USA in the United States since its inception in 1998. During almost two decades of intense collaboration, 27 researchers from Embrapa have served as Labex-USA researchers, in loco interacting with peers in institutions of excellence in the United States in several locations across the country, for periods varying from two to four years. The active agreement between Embrapa and USDA-ARS (December 2015–December 2020) has identified the following areas for research collaboration: (1) natural resources and climate change; (2) new sciences: biotechnology, nanotechnology, geotechnologies; (3) automation, precision agriculture, and information and communication technologies; (4) animal and plant health and safety in the value chain; (5) production systems; (6) agroindustry and biomass technology and green chemistry; (7) food safety and nutrition for health; (8) agricultural competitiveness and science-policy links.

The macro-themes are (1) natural resources and climate change; (2) new sciences: biotechnology, nanotechnology, geotechnologies; (3) automation, precision agriculture, and information and communication technologies; (4) animal and plant health and safety in the value chain; (5) production systems; (6) agroindustry and biomass technology and green chemistry; (7) food safety, nutrition and health; (8) agricultural competitiveness—markets, policies, rural development (and science-policy links).

Hurley et al. (2014) scrutinized 2,242 investment evaluations, reported in 372 separate studies on returns to agricultural research from 1958 to 2011. They recalibrated previously reported IRR and found they were more modest than previous studies have indicated (a median of 9.8% versus 39% per year). Nevertheless, the authors stress that these recalibrated IRR are still substantial enough to question the current scaling back of public agricultural R&D spending in many countries.

This perception prevailed in spite of the fact that more than two-thirds of the national territory at that time remained untouched and could have been—and in fact, according to the military government of that time, should have been—occupied.

In addition, one of the authors estimated that in the 1970s the rearing and finishing phases—i.e., from weaning to slaughter—implied an average methane emission level of 140 kg per head. Nowadays, the corresponding value of methane emission, from weaning to slaughter, would be around of 85 kg per head. Roughly speaking, the Brazilian cattle industry emits today about 50%–60% of the methane, per unit of liveweight gain, that it emitted 40 years ago. In the cow-calf phase the effect of a higher animal performance in reducing methane emission intensity follows the same positive trend. Thus, taking the land-saving effect discussed earlier as an analogy, and considering the substantial decrease in the intensity of emissions provided by animal performance improvements, over the past decades Brazilian agriculture similarly experienced a sizable “methane-saving effect” (G. B. Martha Jr., work in progress, unpublished).

The incentives for Brazilian agriculture have been low compared to other major players. Considering the metric provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), namely the producer support estimate (PSE), Brazilian farmers received incentives averaging 1.6% of total farm receipts during 1995-2014. The corresponding values for farmers in the United States and Europe, in the same period, were 13.5% and 28.3% of total farm receipts, respectively. Data available at https://www.oecd.org/tad/agricultural-policies/producerandconsumersupportestimatesdatabase.htm .

Calculated using FGV’s IGP-DI for September 2016 as a deflator. Data available at http://www.agricultura.gov.br/internacional/indicadores-e-estatisticas/balanca-comercial .

This work is led by USDA-ERS researchers Keith Fuglie and Nicholas Rada. Data available at www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/international-agriculture-productivity .

The world’s per capita income growth in the 2015–2050 period, estimated from OECD’s GDP long-term projection ( OECD 2015 ), was estimated at 2.03%.

The new technology of genome editing called CRISPR-Cas9 promises to revolutionize the science of genetic modification, without the need for transgenics, or the transfer of genes from an organism to another. CRISPR stands for clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats, and represents segments of bacterial DNA that, when paired with a specific guide protein, such as CAS-9 (e.g., CRISPR-associated protein 9), can be used to make target cuts in an organism genome ( Collins et al. 2016 ). With this technique (and, more recently, CRISPR-cpf1), it will soon be possible to edit genomes just like one edits a text, by removing or modifying parts of the DNA of the plant itself to modulate desirable traits.

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Insights into Brazilian Soils and Sustainable Agriculture Scenarios

• First Online: 22 April 2023

Cite this chapter

• Vinicius de Melo Benites 3 ,
• Carlos E. G. R. Schaefer 4 ,
• Pedro Luis O. A. Machado 5 ,
• José Carlos Polidoro 6 &
• Rafael da Silva Teixeira 4  

Part of the book series: World Soils Book Series ((WSBS))

Brazil has a large agricultural output that increased rapidly in recent decades due to advances in soil and agronomic management and practices, continuous investments, and expansion of the cultivated land area, but many challenges are emerging, concerning the long-term sustainability, environmental degradation, and climate change issues. In this chapter, we show that, despite the great advances in soil management and productivity gains for most cash crops, Brazil still needs to increase the crop productivity for key staple foods, due to limited investments in soil fertilization and liming, both below the recommended amount for a successful production. Also, low pasture productivity due to a long-term extractive exploitation model is one of the main causes of widespread soil and pastureland degradation in Brazil. The management of nutrient fertilizers in Brazil is summarized here, highlighting the high dependency we have for imports of most products. The production and use of organomineral fertilizers has grown significantly in Brazil during the last decade, compared with the increasing rates of mineral fertilizers. The use of crushed rocks as fertilizer alternatives, raise many questions about the short-term nutrient availability and supply, low efficiency, and little residual effect. On the other hand, many advances were made in Biological N 2 fixation and associations with mycorrhizal fungi for many different crops. Long-term studies of areas under intense soil management and fertilization showed a good legacy of improved soil fertility status under technified management, particularly in the Brazilian Cerrados. Also, the potential mitigation of the greenhouse effect by appropriate soil management and environmental conservation issues, are highlighted in this review. The adequate use and management of plant nutrients through balanced fertilization can significantly increase the carbon sequestration potential, since more productive crops tend to increase soil organic carbon levels and atmospheric CO 2 sequestration, besides reducing the pressure for further deforestation and expansion of cultivated land. In the closing section, we show that after incorporating deep weathered clay soils (Latosols) under Cerrado into highly productive systems, Brazil now incorporates extensive areas of sandy and medium texture soils of very low fertility into intensive systems, based on heavy fertilization and the adoption of management practices with a conservationist bias. The prospect of the Brazilian agricultural economy strongly lies in the adoption of sound soil management strategies, aiming at increasing productivity and long-term sustainability in the face of many uncertainties in the climate change and global market scenarios.

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de Melo Benites, V., Schaefer, C.E., Machado, P.L.O., Polidoro, J.C., da Silva Teixeira, R. (2023). Insights into Brazilian Soils and Sustainable Agriculture Scenarios. In: Schaefer, C.E.G.R. (eds) The Soils of Brazil. World Soils Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19949-3_18

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Brazil Sustainable and Productive Agricultural Practices Essay (Critical Writing)

Introduction, understanding the vicious cycle & the brazilian problem as a country.

Brazil is the second fifth largest country in the world geographically and in terms of population. In this view, Brazil epitomizes on the ongoing global tension pitying biodiversity preservation against sustainable agricultural practices and economic growth.

Brazil is a key emerging economic power, which has a GDP of US$6040 billion and a GDP per capita of US$326.21 billion in 2004 (European Commission, 2007). The country’s environment is one of the richest in the world because of not only the flora and fauna, but also because of its ecosystems, which contain an excess of 15 % of the plant and animal species known to botanists (Saxena, 2005).

The country is the source of water and also a water table of up to 12% of the available freshwater worldwide the Brazil is also undoubtedly one of the leading producers of food and biofuels in Latin America and globally (Ferreira et al., 2012).

To continue with this trend of leading in food production and water, the country should try to institute measures, which aim at reducing the negative effects of poor farming methods, while improving farming practices.

Therefore, this paper discusses how sustainable and productive agricultural practices can be used to promote economic development and conserve the environment, and thus prevent the occurrence of vicious cycle. The interdependent relationship between the environment, government and businesses lead to changes in economy and market.

Economic stability is largely linked to the governmental institutions, in connection with the society and public demands. Brazil’s environment involves an intricate cooperation between the government, society and nature. Many aspects depend on how the society views nature with the linkage to the government and how it is being treated in the economic setting.

One of the key aspects of any nation is to be able to interest the government, public or society in the products or services that are being offered to people and organizations.

Ascher and Healy (1990) used this concept to demonstrate the complex interrelationships among four critical facets of socio-physical production, which are economic production, distribution of income, natural resources, and the environment.

Concerning the explanation of the relationship between economic development and environmental conservation, it is clear that economic production is the level, source, and composition of goods, and services generated by the economy at any point in time among the four facets of production.

The four facets of production include functional distribution, size distribution among recipients of different levels of income, distribution of in-kind income such as government services or gratifications from an environmental quality, as well as regional income distribution.

Available literature adds multiple citations to support this claim demonstrate that such facets of production have adverse impacts on biodiversity and the conservation of ecosystems in the country (Jain, 1998). Hence, policy makers should incorporate environmental conservation measures into agricultural development to enhance optimization of agricultural production.

The fact that Brazil’s urban regions are increasing and contributing more to the economy, gives the government a clear message that the intricate network must be stimulated in all possible ways. It is also significant to consider the interchange between the social functions, culture and the politics that are dominant and change from one region to another.

When looking at economics, there are few things to have in mind. Different cities and regions have unique and specific economies. The system of trade and relations between businesses are guided by the public, their beliefs and understanding of the government and the market. Some places have better economies with governments giving support and being one of the major clients.

Global approach would guarantee a lot of choice and possibilities for the businesses and the government. Since the pressures for local responsiveness are low, this will guarantee stable income and product or service flow for the community.

Whereas the global integration pressure is high, and decisions can be made with a slower pace and careful consideration of all options available. Because the relationship of “city-regions”, localities, urban areas, cities and provinces is so important, it would be crucial to adjust the policies and regulations to be somewhat universal, for an easier and more beneficial exchange.

In spite of the issue of vicious cycle, Brazil is on the verge of achieving long-term economic development because effective exploitation of natural resources.

According to European Commission (2007),“the dense tropical rainforest of the Amazon, the important biomes of the Savannah-like Cerrado, the arid scrublands of the Coating, the Pampas, and the wetlands of the Pantanal” are some of the natural resources endowed to Brazil (p. 11).

Given that agricultural exports comprise of about 28% of total exports, the government has prioritized agriculture as an important economic activity. However, as demonstrated by these authors, “there are rising concerns about the threats that these changes represent to Brazil’s significant biological wealth globally, including widespread deforestation and clearance of native vegetation, and rapid increases in the use of fertilizers, pesticides and other agricultural chemical supplies” (Ferreira, et al., 2012, p. 536).

On this basis, poor agricultural practices have the capacity to ignite and cause complex vicious cycle, which will ultimately cut across two, or more attributes of sociophysical production.

In the Brazilian context, it is evident that attempts by the government and other stakeholders to enhance the country’s economic development through agricultural expansion have continued to generate a multiple environmental externalities.

Government should encourage farmers to employ environmental conservation practices such as reduction of biological diversity, prevention of soil erosion in rural farming areas, conservation of watershed and natural resources, and prevention of soil and habitat degradation. It should also be included in the process of implementing the environment conservation policies and good farming methods since they are the prime stakeholders in the field of agriculture (Clement, 2005).

Therefore, the country must introduce conservation measures and ensure their implementation by the farmers as well as other players in the agricultural industry.

Vladas (2008) argues that policymakers in Brazil realize that another vicious cycle between economic development and income distribution could occur in the near future as long as farmers in the North East regions of the country continue to use harmful farming practices. Brazil has a unique relationship between people’s culture, the governments and economy are crucial.

Every culture is unique in its set of customs and traditions. Something that is acceptable in one country will be seen as impolite in another. A slow and step by step approach must be taken with such cultures. Prior research will make the outcome more productive.

Thus, even the government should make sure that specifics of a region are known, so that proper procedures and policies are implemented. Also, the government should allow people to contribute to the economy and set up conditions beneficial for entrepreneurial activity. The government’s responsiveness greatly relates to a well established and supportive communication between society and the people, as a result benefiting the economy.

The way forward for environmental policymakers in Brazil, therefore is to put in place strong institutional policies for managing resources and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the agricultural sector.

Water (2008) argues that the government, in conjunction with relevant stakeholders, must act promptly to break the vicious cycle between economic development and environmental degradation by coming up with educational and awareness programs targeting farmers who use poor farming methods to enhance their agricultural output.

Additionally, it is imperative for the government to develop clear management objectives and implementation existing policies effectively (Carneiro & Danton, 2011).

The employment of good and functional institutions and increase of awareness through educational campaigns among farmers is vital in the country’s quest to achieve increased economic development, attain enhanced agricultural output, and improve conservation of the environment. These measures are central to sustainability of productive agriculture and in prevention of the vicious cycle in agricultural sector.

An important role in sustaining and developing economy depends on the management decisions and the actions that are taken in relation to the spending and distribution of the finances and resources. Brazil’s government must enforce and promote strategies that are used in finding the most beneficial and cost-effective way of doing business. It is the most responsible, as well as an environmentally friendly decision.

It must be as efficient as possible, to gain the most financial resources. It encompasses the disposal of waste products, usage of new technologies and the general organization of the company or business matters. The constant development and bettering of products and services, will certainly lead to a positive outcome, so the policymakers should adjust to the changing market and economy, as well as the demands of the society.

It is very important because the success and future of the business depend on it. The decisions made in relation to the environmental factors, being in charge of monitoring the coordination, sustainability and strategic planning by the government, will ensure proper development of economy.

The social and environmental factors play a great role in the running of a business but more importantly a nation, as it will create a strong base for the growth of the market. The safety nets that rest on law and fair control will create stable and guaranteed soil for the economy. As previously discussed, industrialization has brought about a significant change to the lives of nations, individuals and the public.

Industrial globalization has led to all countries cooperating for mutual and own benefit, so new technologies have become a great part of any nation.

Even though the advantages of technology greatly outweigh the disadvantages, there are now, many more ways to abuse the information that can be instrumental to the success of nations. The laws that are being made and governments must carefully monitor the innovations that come into existence, as there are many people who will take advantage of the developed nations.

It is clear that as a result, governments and businesses are forming alliances, cooperating in the common fight against crime and moving towards prosperity and future possibilities. This will also have great consequences in solving the division between classes and strengthening certain regions of the nation.

The relationship between the government, how people view their country and environment is evident from all angles. Both politicians and people are beginning to understand that the only way to continue into the future is through cooperation and mutual respect and support.

The economy depends on individuals, matters they run, society and the government, so society must make sure that there are always laws and regulations that preserve and protect nature and people.

For the Brazil to achieve economic development, it has to embrace the policies of environmental conservation and implement them effectively. Since agriculture is the backbone of the country’s economy, it essential to improve productivity in a sustainable manner to support the livelihoods of farmers in Brazil.

It is noteworthy that the success of these environmental conservation measures is highly dependent on the extent to which stakeholders encourage good farming practices. Owing to laxity in the implementation of conservation policies results in the continuation of harmful and destructive practices of farming that are detrimental to the sustainability of the environment, and thus resulting in vicious cycle.

Ascher. W., & Healy, R.G. (1990). Natural resource policymaking in developing countries: Environment, economic growth, and income distribution . Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Carneiro, J., & Danton, T. (2011). Agriculture and biodiversity in the Brazilian social Sciences: A possible state of the art scenarioinnovation . The European Journal of Social Science, 24 (3), 225-246.

Clement, A. (2005). The economics of a safe minimum standard of conservation. The American Journal of Agriculture, 60 (24), 10-18.

European Commission (2007). Country strategy paper 2007-2013 . Web.

Ferreira, J., Pardini, R., Metzger, J.P., Fonseca, C.R., Pompeu, P.S., Sparovek, G., & Louzada, J. (2012). Towards environmentally sustainable agriculture in Brazil: Challenges and opportunities for applied ecological research. Journal of Applied Ecology, 2 (1), 1-23.

Jain, C. (1998). Agricultural Intensification by Smallholders in the Western Brazilian Amazon. Journal of Regional Science, 15 (2), 55-60.

Saxena, D. (2005). Agricultural development in Uttah, The Geographer, 32 (1), 20-28.

Vladas, G. (2008). Conservation of Environment. Journal of Environmental Physiology 23(1), 21-32

Walter, C. (2008). Overview of India’s Agricultural Economy. Asia Pacific Development Journal, 10 (2), 15-20.

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IvyPanda. (2019, April 19). Brazil Sustainable and Productive Agricultural Practices. https://ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-policy-making-in-developing-countries-brazil/

"Brazil Sustainable and Productive Agricultural Practices." IvyPanda , 19 Apr. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-policy-making-in-developing-countries-brazil/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Brazil Sustainable and Productive Agricultural Practices'. 19 April.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Brazil Sustainable and Productive Agricultural Practices." April 19, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-policy-making-in-developing-countries-brazil/.

1. IvyPanda . "Brazil Sustainable and Productive Agricultural Practices." April 19, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-policy-making-in-developing-countries-brazil/.

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IvyPanda . "Brazil Sustainable and Productive Agricultural Practices." April 19, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/environmental-policy-making-in-developing-countries-brazil/.

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Global Alliance to combat hunger and ensure sustainable food production

Top agricultural experts from the G20 are engaged in discussions on food security and strategies for climate change adaptation. During these discussions, the tragic occurrences in Southern Brazil were highlighted as a poignant example of the profound consequences stemming from global warming.

The G20 agriculture leaders convened to address critical issues of food security and the adaptation of agricultural systems to climate change, with the shared goal of ensuring a more equitable and hunger-free future for generations to come. Hosted by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária - Embrapa), the meeting is ongoing until May 17 at the G20 headquarters in Brasília. This gathering is part of the G20 -MACS (Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists), an annual summit bringing together heads of agricultural research organizations affiliated with ministries of agriculture or equivalent bodies across G20 countries. It serves as a platform for high-level discussions centered on agricultural research and development, aimed at raising global awareness of food security challenges and fostering collaborative international initiatives.

The recent floods in Rio Grande do Sul were underscored by all meeting participants as a poignant illustration of climate-related tragedies necessitating scientific intervention. The Brazilian delegation advocated for collaborative efforts in the medium and long term to rehabilitate arable lands and mitigate future calamities.

In addition to delegations from G20 countries, the event saw participation from experts representing ten invited countries, as well as prominent organizations including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Silvia Massruhá, President of EMBRAPA, articulated, “We are witnessing a global nutritional transition. Our challenge is to produce more nutritious foods that cater to the preferences of a discerning consumer base concerned with nutrition, health, and food provenance, all while advancing sustainability.”

Marcelo Morandi, the organization's Head of International Affairs, highlighted the priority of fostering a sustainable and resilient agriculture. He emphasized, "Our goal is to ensure sufficient quantity and quality of food production to combat hunger and poverty. This remains our primary focus throughout the three-day meeting.”

Science, technology, and innovation play vital roles not only in fostering the advancement of sustainable practices but also in guiding public policy decisions. Over the past five decades, technological advancements in the agricultural sector have facilitated a remarkable increase in productivity, soaring from 140% to 580%, alongside a significant expansion of land usage from 20 to 70 million hectares (from 49.4 to 173 million acres). Emphasizing this progress, the president of EMBRAPA noted during the event's opening that “such achievements wouldn't have been feasible without the invaluable support of approximately five million rural producers throughout the country.”

Massruhá reminded the leaders that the crisis in Rio Grande do Sul is not an isolated incident. Several extreme events have occurred in various countries, serving as a cautionary tale for the global scientific community.  “Advancements in science have enhanced the accuracy of models and risk assessments, underscoring the gravity of our current situation and future challenges. We must adapt, innovate, and prepare for a prolonged period of significant disruption that will test the foundations of our existential equilibrium,” emphasized the president.

Massruhá emphasized the significance of sharing experiences among the G20 countries in tackling the substantial challenges posed by climate change and food insecurity. “These issues rank highest among our priorities within the G20 agricultural research systems,” she noted. Massruhá further advocated for EMBRAPA's initiatives in developing new technologies with significant impact, particularly for countries in the Global South.

Agriculture faces significant vulnerability to climate change and its ongoing impacts, with projections indicating a likelihood of exacerbation in the years ahead. According to Massruhá, “EMBRAPA and Brazil advocate for the adoption of technology and best sustainable practices, including no-till farming, integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems (ICLF), utilization of bioinputs, incorporation of new technologies, and collaborative efforts in developing sustainability metrics.”

Julio Ramos, a G20 member of the agriculture working group representing the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA), highlighted that the agricultural sector accounts for a quarter of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 20% of formal employment in the country. “Through this meeting, Brazil extends an invitation to the global community to collaborate in creating a more equitable world,” Ramos asserted.

Enhancing Productivity in Existing Agricultural Areas

Fernanda Machiaveli, Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture (Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário e Agricultura Familiar – MDA), underscored Brazil's position as one of the world's leaders in clean energy production. She identified the country's primary challenge as enhancing productivity without expanding agricultural areas. Machiaveli commended the 51% reduction in deforestation in the Amazon, emphasizing the need for collaborative efforts in developing sustainable technologies capable of generating income and employment for the 30 million inhabitants of the Amazon Rainforest.

The second challenge is to ensure that small farmers, indigenous peoples, settlers, and traditional communities have access to technological advancements. “Currently, 24 million individuals from these demographics are experiencing hunger,” the executive secretary revealed.

Machiaveli stressed EMBRAPA's crucial role in ensuring agricultural sustainability and underscored the necessity of concerted efforts between the organization and the MDA to devise a comprehensive set of measures for the revitalization of agriculture in Rio Grande do Sul.

Carlos Augustin, representing MAPA’s Minister Carlos Fávaro, highlighted during the event that Brazil currently possesses 70 million hectares (173 million acres) of productive land alongside 160 million hectares (395 million acres) of degraded pastures.

Wellington Rocha, representing the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture (Ministério da Pesca e Aquicultura - MPA), underscored the critical role of science in fostering the growth of sustainable aquaculture within Brazil's 740 conservation units spanning 8,500 kilometers (5.281 miles) of coastline. “Science serves as a potent catalyst for social inclusion, particularly in engaging young individuals in this sector,” Rocha concluded.

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Fallout From Brazil’s Historic Floods to Last Into Next Season

Catastrophic floods in southern Brazil will have long-lasting impacts for agriculture, with soaked soils making it harder for farmers to plant crops including rice and wheat for next season. Growers in Rio Grande do Sul will likely be forced to shift away from their traditional crops and into new cultures, according to Silvia Massruhá, head of agricultural research agency Embrapa. Wheat output, already forecast to drop 4.3% in the state in the season that was supposed to start this month, could be even lower after the floods.

“There will be a need for rearranging agriculture and feedstock activities in that region,” Massruhá told Bloomberg . “The soil has soaked up a lot of water, so we don’t know what share of rice or wheat farmers will be able to plant the next crop or if they will need to plant something else before until the soil recovers.”

Embrapa plans to send researchers to the affected areas to run soil analysis and diagnose the crop situation when water levels drop.

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In Brazil, unprecedented flooding may force a political reckoning

“this is going to shake the mindsets of voters.".

Vitor Martinez, a 25-year-old musician and community organizer, lives in Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul — the southernmost state in Brazil. Martinez’s neighborhood borders Guaíba Lake, around which Porto Alegre’s main attractions are clustered. On a sunny, 80-degree Fahrenheit day in late March, people biked, ran, and strolled along the promenade that surrounds the lake. Shoppers flocked to a mall on the bottom floor of a brand new Hilton DoubleTree hotel in the middle of the neighborhood. More than 23,000 people from all over the world gathered a few miles away at a conference center near the city’s historic downtown to talk about the future of technology and business in South America. That version of Porto Alegre — manicured and prosperous — is a distant memory now, Martinez said. 

Last Friday, after a week of unrelenting rain dumped inches of water on southern Brazil , Guaíba Lake — technically a river that receives runoff from five other tributaries — breached its banks and burst into Porto Alegre. The floodwaters submerged vast swaths of the city, including its historic downtown and airport, and caused unspeakable damage across the rest of Rio Grande do Sul. As of Thursday, 1.45 million people in 417 of the 497 cities in the state had been affected by flooding and landslides. Nearly 100,000 homes have been damaged or wrecked , 155,000 people are displaced or homeless , and the death toll stands at 113, with more than 140 people still missing . Guaíba Lake had just started to recede when more rain started to fall on Friday. 

“There’s no precedent in Brazil for the crisis we are experiencing at the state level,” Jonatas Rubert, another resident of Porto Alegre, said Thursday evening. “The apprehension about what will happen in the next few days is immense.” 

Martinez has been sheltering in his small apartment with his mother and grandparents, who were forced to evacuate their homes as the floodwaters advanced. The apartment, situated on elevated ground, was spared the worst of the flooding. In Porto Alegre and other parts of the state, people who lost their homes to the floodwaters are surviving on limited food supplies and dwindling sources of clean water. “Because the water is so high, we don’t know yet how many people have died,” Martinez said. 

The flooding in Rio Grande do Sul is shaping up to be one of the worst environmental disasters in Brazil’s history. On Thursday, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced a 50 billion reais ($9.7 billion) relief and redevelopment package to be deployed in southern Brazil right away — a historic investment that represents the “first” round of aid , he said. 

Many factors helped produce a catastrophe of this scale. Experts have named climate change and the El Niño, the natural weather phenomenon that periodically changes oceanic and atmospheric conditions, as chief culprits for the intensity and rapid onset of the flooding. But a series of decisions by the local, state, and federal government in Brazil over the past decade have also contributed to the devastating effect the flooding has had on communities in Rio Grande do Sul, shaped the inadequate humanitarian response to the ongoing suffering there, and limited Brazil’s broader capacity to adapt to the worsening impacts of climate change. 

Experts told Grist that the astronomic scale and cost of the floods may mark an inflection point in the way Brazilians think about environmental policies and climate change, particularly climate change adaptation — systemic adjustments that can safeguard against future impacts. 

“This is going to shake the mindsets of voters,” said Carlos R. S. Milani, senior fellow at the Brazilian Center for International Relations, a think tank, and the Brazilian Scientific Development Council, a government organization. Whether the disaster affects decisions made by their elected representatives is still an open question. 

Rio Grande do Sul has been besieged by recurrent large flooding events this year, one of the climate change impacts that climate scientists have predicted for Brazil and South America in general . But flooding is just one of the extreme weather events Brazilians have experienced in the past 12 months. In late 2023, rivers in the Amazon rainforest reached historic lows as temperatures in Brazil hit a record-breaking 138 degrees F — one of nine heatwaves that gripped the country last year. A 23-year-old woman died of cardiac arrest after standing in line for a Taylor Swift concert in the record-breaking temperatures for hours . In March, Rio de Janeiro registered a new heat index record: 144 degrees F . 

“I have no doubt that climate change has to do with it,” said Raissa Ferreira, campaign director for Greenpeace Brazil, referring to these recent events. “The greenhouse gas effect is getting more potent.” 

The El Niño that formed last year and is extending into this year has exacerbated severe climate impacts across Brazil , including the drought in the Amazon and increased rainfall in the southern parts of the country . Scientists are investigating whether the intensity of the El Niño — which may be the strongest in seven decades — is also a symptom of worsening climate change . 

The climate impacts of the past 12 months should not have caught Brazil’s government by surprise. In 2014, the administration of the president at the time, Dilma Rousseff, commissioned a strategy document titled “Brazil 2040: Scenarios and alternatives for adapting to climate change .” The report was prescient, if overly conservative: Many of the climate impacts it projected, including extreme flooding, have come to pass more than 15 years ahead of schedule. The center-left Rousseff administration ultimately buried the report, and subsequent governments have failed to take up the mantle. The result is that Brazil, the sixth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and an emerging global power, has a climate adaptation strategy in name only . “Climate adaptation needs to be implemented,” Ferreira said, “but we see very negative signs in Brazil that that is a political priority.”  

Meanwhile, far-right political parties in Brazil have spent years dismantling environmental protections, eschewing established climate science, and promoting the interests of the country’s booming agribusiness sector at the expense of Brazil’s vulnerable natural resources. The strategy, fiercely opposed by the country’s left-wing and Indigenous factions, has garnered consistent support from the public. 

Rio Grande do Sul, a state that is highly dependent on agricultural production, especially of rice and soybeans, twice voted for former Brazilian president and ardent climate denier Jair Bolsonaro by a substantial margin . Porto Alegre’s mayor and Rio Grande do Sul’s governor, both right-wing politicians, have stripped the local and state budgets of environmental and civil defense funding. 

The city’s mayor, Sebastião Melo, did not spend a penny on improving the city’s flood systems in 2023, and made substantial cuts to the municipal flood prevention program in 2021 and 2022 . Porto Alegre could have planted mangroves and grasses to help absorb flood water, established early warning systems for at-risk neighborhoods, and built walls and other infrastructure to keep river water out of the city. None of those precautions were taken. Meanwhile, Rio Grande do Sul Governor Eduardo Leite’s 2024 budget allocated less than 50,000 reais — less than $10,000 — to emergency preparedness, evacuations, recovery, and other aspects of civil defense . 

“The word on the street is that the governor left 50,000 reais for the possibility of a catastrophe like this,” said Giordano Gio, a 31-year-old filmmaker in Porto Alegre. “This is, like, the cost of a Honda Civic.” In a poll this week, 70 percent of Brazilians said infrastructure investments could have lessened the risks of the recent flooding.

The floods raise a number of questions about what happens next in Rio Grande do Sul and Brazil in general. Before the floods hit, Lula’s government was trying to rebalance the federal budget, reduce the national deficit, and reinvest in Brazil’s middle class . The crisis may scramble those efforts. The floods, said Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist and professor at Rio de Janeiro State University, are “going to have a serious impact in terms of inflation, in terms of food prices in Brazil. It’s very bad news to the Lula government in a moment when the president already has many challenges on his plate.” One of those challenges, and a priority for Lula, is reducing the rapid deforestation of the Amazon rainforest . Rainforest deforestation, much of it in service of exposing more arable land for agricultural production, is responsible for half of Brazil’s carbon emissions.

The influx of federal funding to Rio Grande do Sul will help rebuild the state, but experts Grist spoke to and people on the ground in Porto Alegre wonder what happens next from a climate preparedness perspective. “Lula was elected in a big coalition that has a lot of right-wing people in it,” said Gio, the filmmaker. Left-wing parties control only a quarter of the seats in Brazil’s House and Senate , which hinders Lula’s ability to pass climate change legislation. “There’s a lot of things going on politically that might affect” potential climate policy, Gio said.

More environmental disasters will affect Brazil in the coming months. High temperatures this year are expected to produce even more severe drought in the Amazon , for example, and the states that surround the rainforest are among the poorest in the country. Rio Grande do Sul, one of the wealthiest states in Brazil, is better positioned to recover from an event of this magnitude than most other regions of the country. “If this could happen in a richer area of the country, what if it happens next in a very poor one?” asked Milani. “The capacity to adapt, to respond, is much less.” 

That question — what happens now? — will linger long after the floodwaters have receded. “I would have the intuition as a political scientist that climate and environment will very much be at the heart of debate in many municipal elections all over the country this year because of this event in Rio Grande do Sul,” Santoro said. “This is a political struggle more than anything else right now.” 

In Porto Alegre, Martinez has been manning his local soup kitchen and working with his fellow community organizers to develop systems to handle the influx of relief aid they have been receiving from people all over the world. For him, watching people in his community help each other has been a small silver lining in the midst of the ongoing horror. “Local governments have abandoned us,” he said. “We will not watch our neighborhoods get destroyed and do nothing.” 

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