ASH CLOUD
ASH CLOUD
Brazil's transition from a net food importer to one of the world's leading exporters over the last 50 years with Bruno Brasil, Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock
There is a huge amount we can learn from Brazil’s transition from being a net food importer to one of the world’s largest food exporters over the last 50 years. Since deforestation across the Amazon peaked in the mid 1990’s Brazil has continued to invest in both driving productivity increases alongside increasing efforts to preserve wilderness areas and restore degraded lands. To help address climate change the government has doubled investment including doubling investment in low carbon agriculture from $1Billion to $2 Billion through their ABC plan. This program includes making low interest credit available for Brazilian farmers to adopt low carbon practices.
Over the last 10 years productivity of beef cattle in Brazil increased by 2.5% per year and dairy production by almost 4% per year. At the same time the ABC plus plan for beef cattle aims to reduce methane emissions and methane intensity. A huge component of this recovering 40 million hectares of degraded pasture land.
Today, around 80% of the Amazon is protected by law to combat deforestation.
The impact of the Brazilian Government’s investment in education through Embrapa’s long running programs of sponsor Brazilian PhD students across world leading universities cannot be understated.
Today we are joined by Bruno Brasil, the director of Sustainable Production and Irrigation at the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock where he coordinates the Sectoral Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change and Low Carbon Emissions in Agriculture.
Brazilian farming is highly diverse, over 85% are family farmers, with over 80% of these below 50ha. At the other end of the scale, the largest 1% of all properties in Brazil are responsible for 49% of food production in value terms.
As Brazil prepares to host world leaders at COP30 later this year I welcome Bruno to discuss the successes and challneges facing Brazilain agriculture.
You can listen to our conversation here:
Welcome to the AppLab on App Twitter. That's a huge amount we can learn from Brazil Transition for Band Food Importer. One of the world's largest food exporters out of the last 50 years. Preserving wilderness areas, restoring degraded land. And with a very diverse farming sector. We coordinate a sector plan for adaptation to climate change and low carbon emission agriculture. Brazil is also making preparations to host world leaders at COP30 later. Bruno, thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you, Ed. It's a great opportunity to be here. Brazil has one of the largest cattle herds in the world. And as methane and the environmental footprint of livestock production is continuing to be an important topic, can you just run us through um what's happening in Brazil and how Brazil sees uh this challenge and opportunity?
SPEAKER_02:Great question, Ash. Actually, Brazil, if we take back 50 years ago, Brazil used to be an importer of staple foods. Uh but after that, after uh some investments in science and technology made by the government together with the private sector, I would point specifically the creation of Embrapa, our Brazilian agency for agricultural research. We were able to adapt some technologies and practices to the tropical conditions that we have in most parts of Brazil. Basically, we were taking advantage of the technologies that were implemented during the Green Revolution in the global north and adapting to the conditions that we have uh here in the country. That uh enabled the country to produce enough food to feed the Brazilians until the 90s, and after the 90s, with the globalization and uh an increasing uh an also ongoing increase in the production of agricultural products in Brazil, Brazil started to become a uh leading exporter of food products uh to several countries, several markets uh around the globe. Part of it is animal protein, and Brazil is today the largest beef exporter in the world. This uh, of course, provides uh nutrition, provides food to several millions of people, but you also have some uh trade-offs regarding emissions of methane, specifically related to climate change. This is not the only issue that we usually have here in Brazil concerning agricultural production and trade-offs with the environment. Another one would be land use and uh aspects of either direct or indirect deforestation. Uh and aware of that since 2005, Brazil started deploying and implementing some national policies to fight deforestation, especially in the Amazon area and also in the savannah area of the Cerrado. And after 2010, we started to implement our sectoral plan for agriculture to fight climate change in the sector. It's called the ABC Plan, the Low Carbon Agriculture Plan. It's based on providing incentives for farmers so they can adopt practice and technologies that are more sustainable. And the basis of the plan is that we are increasing productivity, reducing costs, or adding value to some residues, for example, through manure treatment, and also contributing to uh fight climate change by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and also adapting to the effects of climate change. Specifically regarding livestock production and more specifically beef cattle production. We are now on the second phase of the ABC, the ABC Plus plan from 2021 to 2030, and we have some specific technologies uh dedicated to address the reduction of the intensity of methane emissions per unit of product, especially in livestock. Uh I'll point some of them. One of them would be manure treatment, as I have already mentioned, and the other one would be intensive fattening and termination. Basically, by providing uh more feed and with a better quality feed, especially during the fattening and termination phase of beef cattle production, you can reduce the average age of slaughtering of beef cattle, thereby you mitigate methane emissions from enteric fermentation. We also have other practices such as recovery of degraded pastures and integrated livestock crop and livestock crop forestry systems that also contribute to an overall increase in the productivity of livestock production systems and can uh lead to a reduction in the intensity of methane emissions. If we take into consideration the historical trends of uh the herd growth here in Brazil and also the herd dynamics in other countries, especially in North America and in Europe, once the pace of productivity increase is more accelerated than the pace of increase in the demand for animal products, then you start to stabilize and reduce the absolute number of heads, uh the absolute size of the herd. So basically, our projections show that by the end of this decade, somewhere between 2030-2035, we might be reaching that. Why I'm I'm saying that? Because in the last 10 years, productivity of beef cattle production in in Brazil, it increases approximately 2.5% per year. And if you if we consider diary, it was almost 4% per year. So basically, there it's accelerating, it's a good pace of increasing productivity, and it's even higher than the increasing the demand. And I'm not talking only about the demand in Brazil, but of course globally.
SPEAKER_01:So there's there's a lot of things going on there. You've got the fact that thank you for the the background on the Brazilian beef industry and and um how Brazil went from a net food importer to an exporter um quite dramatically or rapid change over the last um number of decades. And so you've got you've got global demands are still driving increased um production of or increased demand for and sales of of red meat or protein. Um but then when you start to look at population um dynamics, China's aging population, even India's population starting to swing. Not that they eat a lot of meat, but then um, and then North American and European populations are also starting to swing. That's where you've got those changes in demand and what forecast growth is looking like. You've got that balance. You know, Brazil's a very fortunate country because it's got, you know, it's it's tropical, it's got lots of sunshine, it's got lots of water, so the ability to to grow a lot of agricultural products is good, but then you've got that balance between um deforestation and biodiversity and how much land you need to keep in forestry and in native native lands compared to how much you can you can change. Um and then you've got the fact that because of that rapid growth um over the last uh recent decades, you've got a very different kind of you don't have a sort of a heritage um or a big heritage type of animal production system like exists in other parts of the global south. You've got so much technology that's been imported from the global north, so you have the ability to to change and adapt probably at a much faster scale than many other countries in the global south. So, how do you see the nexus of all of those things fitting together?
SPEAKER_02:Well, we are in a different moment right now. If you take into consideration the the trend that I have described previously in the last five decades, until the 90s, basically, uh there was a lot of uh input of technology and and new practice uh on rural areas, but also an expansion in the area used. After the 90s, Brazil started to deploy a series of policies to preserve native vegetation and to combat deforestation. So basically, what we are watching right now is it's an intensification of production, yet on a sustainable and extensive basis, if I can, if you allow me to say so, because basically beef cattle production is still based on grazing systems, and what we are managing better is basically the quality of the pasture by recovering degraded pastures, integrating livestock and crop uh systems, as well as providing uh animal feed better of better quality in the final phase of production. The same for crop production. In the tropics, as you have mentioned, it is possible to produce over one crop per year. So basically, today in Brazil we have three harvests per year. We have the first crop, the second crop, and the third crop. Usually the first crop, the choice is soybean, is during the beginning of the rainy season. And then you have the second crop that starts by the end of the rainy rainy season and goes through the dry season. And if you are working with integrated systems or very good genetics, you can have a third harvest as well, usually using maize, uh beans or cotton. But uh as you were mentioning, how can we consider the constraints and the planet boundaries, how can we still cope with the increasing demand of food production, especially coming from the global south, where you still have uh growing populations and income, uh rising income in in several countries? Basically, if we consider that in Brazil we have something around 170 million hectares of pasture land, and approximately half of it is somewhat degraded, we can manage better this something around 80 million, 90 million hectares of pasture to produce more with less land and less inputs in a more efficient way. That's why uh to actually accelerate the implementation of the ABC Plus plant during this decade, we have launched, Brazil has launched the Brazilian Greenway. That's a program with a target to recover 40 million hectares of degraded uh areas in Brazil, especially pasture land. And something around 26 million hectares of those are highly suitable for crop production. So you can convert it for crop production or integrate it in crop livestock production systems. The rest of it can be dedicated to better pasture management and livestock production, and also a share of it to native vegetation, restoration, and planted forests. This has been mapped, distributed in several biomes in Brazil, but especially in the Cerrado Biome, which is the main area where we have agricultural production in the country. And we are right now implementing the first trench of investment uh of this program. It's bringing around uh$1 billion,$1 billion.2 dollars in a blended finance uh through a blended finance fund that was created by the Ministry of Finance here in Brazil. It's called ECOINvest, and that will double the amount of specific budget allocated to uh low carbon agricultural practice annually in Brazil. Usually we invest something around 1 billion, 1 billion and a half through what we call our harvest plan. It's basically to finance through specific credit lines the production uh uh in Brazil. And there are some specific lines with lower interest rates that if the producers the producer is willing to adopt sustainable practice from the low carbon agriculture plan, it can access those lower interest rates, specific credit lines of around 1 billion, 1 billion and a half per year. Now, with the Brazilian Greenway, we are doubling it just with the first trench, and we intend to do more, especially attracting international investment.
SPEAKER_01:And that's all that's a federal government, a national government initiative rather than rather than through the different states.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's a national initiative. This Brazilian Greenway, the ABC plan is also a national initiative, but it's highly coordinated with the subnational government. So we have a specific steering committee for each one of the subnational governments in Brazil, link it to the national committee, commune uh the national committee of the low carbon agriculture plan. 27 27 federal units.
SPEAKER_01:And to to take a step back in terms of to give a bit of an idea about the the farm size or ranch size in Brazil, um, you know, we're talking about you know 80 million hectares or 25 million hectares, and you have to multiply that by two and a half um to get acres. So you know, we we that these are not small, small amounts of land we're talking about. But in terms of you know, what's what's an average farm size, what's an average ranch size in terms of hectares or acres and and number of cows?
SPEAKER_02:Well, what happens in the rural landscape in Brazil is that it's highly unequal and highly diverse. Basically, if you are uh talking about an average farm, you're probably not going to find it, basically, because you have it's so so diverse. But uh we have over 80 percent, actually, uh 8080, 88 percent of our producers are family farmers or smallholders. Okay uh around uh 80 80 something percent of the the rural properties are below 50 hectares. They are mostly located in the northeast part of Brazil, but also in the the south part of Brazil. They were established during the the early periods of colonization, or more recently, about 200 years ago, in in some immigrants that came from Italy, Germany to the south of Brazil. Okay, uh, then we have a different landscape in the Midwest part of Brazil where you are going to find some very large-scale farms, and those uh large-scale farms, they can be you can separate them in highly technified ones, and I can say to you that 1% of all the rural properties in Brazil um they are responsible for 49% of the gross uh production uh value of the basically the the production value, the whole production value of the country. But if you take into consideration that the the 2% of largest the largest 2% of properties that we have in Brazil, half of them produce 50% of everything that we produce, and the other half produce 0.5% of what we produce. Basically, there you're going to find most of this degraded area that I have mentioned. So they are underutilized and they could be better managed. So that's why uh there is a distinction in Brazil because we have some national policies that cover broadly all the production chains, such as the low-carbon agriculture plan. And we have also national policies dedicated only for smallholders and family farmers. As we call here the program for family farmers, PRONAF, it was created during the 90s and provide incentives specifically for those uh the those uh smallholders.
SPEAKER_01:So you you certainly have a huge um yeah, I thank you for saying that the average is a rather uh meaningless kind of way of thinking about it because of course of that diversity.
SPEAKER_02:One-third of the the cropland in Brazil is in the hands of less than one percent of the producers.
SPEAKER_01:So my next my next question was you know in the direction of you know what's needed in terms of you know technology, capacity, financing, etc., uh, or research. But uh that that needs to also be filtered through those different lenses to the different um parts or the different size um you know operations out there. So what is needed you know for the different areas in terms of to address the the biggest challenges they have?
SPEAKER_02:Well, you're considering only beef cattle or all food production.
SPEAKER_01:All food production.
SPEAKER_02:All right. There is uh this challenge of gains of efficiency and productivity, and if you're considering livestock production, that's uh a major part of it. It's the a better management of pasture and and also uh a better management, especially in the the fat and termination phase. There is uh for crop production, so we can keep continuing advancing on the second and the third harvest and sparing land, it's important to increase irrigation on a sustainable basis, coupled with good uh soil management and of course cover crops, no zero tillage systems, and so on. That's part of the ABC Plus plan. And we understand that given the effects of climate change that we are already experiencing in some parts of Brazil, especially in the in the extreme south of Brazil and also in the Midwest part and some parts of the northeast that are becoming arid areas. They used to be semi-arid, but there is now the presence of some arid areas in Brazil. This uh best practice for managing soil health and sustainable irrigation, they will be key to keep improving, increasing production without expanding the share of land used for agricultural production, which is basically the the pillar. Uh the main pillar is to not advance uh over native vegetation.
SPEAKER_01:So there's that to in case it wasn't clearly stated enough, the the more efficient you can make the current agricultural land that takes away any need or desire or uh risk that that further deforestation will take place. So improving the productivity of currently existing agricultural land is in many ways the best um tool we have for preserving preserving the forest land and the native vegetation.
SPEAKER_02:It's one pillar of it. It's one very important pillar. The other pillar is command and control to avoid deforestation, to really protect areas of native vegetation. That's something that is led by the Ministry of Environment here in Brazil. They are combating deforestation using uh public mechanisms of surveillance and and basically uh, for example, inside the Amazon biome, around 80% uh of all the land, all the areas are protected by law. So you you cannot deforestate that, and you need a surveillance system dedicated for it. It's part of our program to combat deforestation in the Amazon. It was created in 2004. We are now in the 50 phase of this program, and it actually decreased a lot uh the rate of deforestation in that biome since 2005. But uh uh so increasing productivity is important, but you also need to protect the forests through common and control enforcement uh programs together. Otherwise, uh if there is no uh restriction to deforestation, you might create a perverse incentive to opening more areas, and you're basically uh taking away some of the advantage of those that really invested in technology to gain productivity. So you have to deal with those two pillars together, two two basically two drivers, two drivers uh in parallel.
SPEAKER_01:The the preservation of the the Amazon biome, how is that something that has you know, I guess can you elaborate more on that? And I'm thinking about is it something that's broadly um is it contentious within the Brazilian population, or is it broadly um, you know, does most of the population buy into that? Um, and and how big a challenge is it and how important is it?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I don't know if you're familiar with the trends of deforestation in Brazil and particularly in the Amazon, but the peak of deforestation uh it happened during the 90s until 2005. After that, we achieved uh uh historical reduction in the lowest rate of deforestation around 2011 and 2012. That was due to the creation of this program that I have just uh mentioned, the PP Sedan, the program to combat deforestation in the Amazon, and basically based on surveillance, better surveillance systems and active enforcement through the Ministry of Environment to protect those areas. Uh we stayed some somewhere in those levels until 2016 and especially until 2019. During that decade, Brazil suffered from some uh budget issues and there was a small uh uh increase, but after 2019 it increased it more due to uh a more uh political due to political aspects. Okay after that in 2023 we had a change in the administration and we reduced it around 40-45 percent since 2023 until nowadays. So it responds rapidly and in a very meaningful way to law enforcement. If you are financing, if there is finance and political willingness to do it, it is possible to do. It's highly supported by the population in general. All Brazilians will support the to combat deforestation, especially in the Amazon. So when we have those peaks, we when we had more recently those peaks of deforestation, they were basically illegal. They were flaws in the surveillance system. And if you are investing more in this uh law enforcement, you can protect them.
SPEAKER_01:And Brazil is facing the same political winds that uh much of the world is facing between the the different sides of their political um conversations.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's part of the democracy, right? I I believe the the people, the citizens, they have the right to choose the the politicians, their leaders, and the ones that they think is more are more suitable for uh that particular moment. But uh I also uh would like to highlight because uh the values to protect the environment, to to protect the forests, to basically uh increase life quality in in the whole world and in any specific country is a desire of everyone, every citizen. And even if there is a change, or sometimes we are um I don't like the perspective that we are assigning a side for the environmental agenda, it's not a side, it's part of ourselves, it's something that we we we must take care of, and and it's part of our work here on the planet uh to basically live well and live well with every everything and everybody that's surrounding us. So uh even though there might be some extremes, and we are experiencing that in several countries, especially democratic countries from the West, uh, more recently, uh I understand that the trend is still uh on a good path, although we really need to accelerate that. It's pointing to the to a better direction, but it we must move faster.
SPEAKER_01:In terms of the impacts of climate change on Brazil, you mentioned you know, up in the north, northeast, and down in the south, um and you know, semi-arid areas being turned into arid areas. Are there any other um impacts that you're noticing um in Brazil, both from I guess from a you know variable very greater variability in rainfall or cl or or weather patterns or anything in terms of climate change and impacting your neighbours or impacting migration or or people moving from like I'm thinking not as dramatic as this, but you know, in early you know, 2004, 2005, 2006, the droughts in Syria led to lots and lots of young people moving from rural areas to cities. So is there any impacts like that that Brazil is feeling that that you could share?
SPEAKER_02:Well, around the around 80% of the impact and the crop losses that we have due to climate change in Brazil are due to drought, uh basically water scarcity. Uh it can be uh something specific for one year, or can be something that is more uh endemic, such as we have in the semi-arid area in the northeast of Brazil. We are still not observing large migratory movements, but they might start to appear. I'll I'll give you an example. In our in the extreme south of Brazil, we have the state of Rio Grande do Sul. And this state is being highly impacted to climate change, according to the exacerbated impacts of La Ninha and El Nino. That influenced the climate in the region. So in 2021 and 2022, we faced severe droughts in that region. It's a major soybean uh wheat uh rice production area. And last year we had a major fluid in the history in there. It impacted uh not only the capital of the state, the city of Porto Alegre, but several rural areas and devastated uh some areas. Uh that led to some farmers abandoning the activity and moving to other states, but it's still not really a large movement. There are uh the the state government and the national government are working together very hard to basically rebuild the state and to provide technical assistance and and to provide uh uh finance to the farmers so they can continue with their activities. And hopefully this will not be will not become so frequent in that region that we really experience this change. But if you take into consideration the history of Brazil, uh during the 60s until the 90s, we had a major migration from people from rural areas in the northeast of Brazil, the semi-arid region, to the southeast part, especially to the state of São Paulo, where we have most of our industries and it's the financial center of the country. That has changed. We have this week we have uh received the the updated data from the national census, and this movement has basically decreased a lot in the last decade. We we are not observing anymore. There are more people moving away from São Paulo, especially the capital, than coming there uh nowadays. But uh those are the the impact that we might start to see again. Uh, I I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see that again.
SPEAKER_01:And obviously that will then depend on where you have the greatest impacts and and people's livelihoods and and lifestyles are are interrupted. Um back to back to the the cattle side of things. Um what what do you see? I guess I guess there's two things. There's one is you know, you you get the conversation in the broad press about what the big issues are, and then you speak to farmers or researchers, and um they'll probably have a different set of big issues than what you hear in the press. So do you want to talk about you know how you see those different challenges? What what what are the ones in the public conversation and what what farmers are saying and how they align together?
SPEAKER_02:Well, uh first of all, the two things that are is important to consider. Uh when we are talking about climate change, we're talking about energy transition and phasing away from fossil fuels. That's the main point. Otherwise, if if we do not do that, anything else that we do, it will not be enough. The second one, if you're talking, if you are implementing some change in the agricultural sector, agricultural livestock and so on, you must bring farmers and ranchers as your allies. Okay, they should not be considered enemies or something that you are basically fighting against them or against their activities or their livelihoods. You never get them on board if you are taking this approach. They can be part of the solution, and you're going to find a big share of farmers and ranchers willing to adopt sustainable practice as long as they are uh synergic with their activity, with their livelihoods, with their business. Okay, that's why uh when I mentioned uh while we were designing the low carbon agriculture plan and the set of interventions that we would finance, they need to uh provide for farmers and ranchers a benefit in terms of productivity, increase, cost reduction, or adding value to any residue that they might have. If you are taking this approach, you might have them on board providing specific specific incentives and of course combating some uh some bad practices I have mentioned, such as illegal deforestation, I have mentioned uh before. And that would be the approach. Sometimes uh you have a war of narratives and some some perspectives, some perspectives coming from just from urban consumers, especially from the global north, where you have a totally different demographic and livelihood uh condition. Okay, uh basically the people are getting older in those countries, uh, the population is stabilized or decline or declining by at least 20 years, and you are uh on in a high-income country. If you consider that in the global south, and you're talking, for example, about change in diets, that's not something that that will basically bring any appeal in low or middle-income countries or extreme unequal countries as you have in Brazil. Basically, and uh it's hard to tell someone who had never ate sufficient meat to eat less meat because somewhere else people ate too much, or some other people from his own country ate too much. So it's hard to deal with this type of narrative. But if you're going to the production side, if you're talking about best practice, something that conciliates the growth of the business, the improvement in the activity and the livelihoods of people in rural areas, then you bring them on board.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's that perspective in terms of you know what life is like in much of the global south, and um and also and and and the perception of people in the global north is very um very very real. And you know, there's been parts of the global south that I've been to in Asia or in Africa where you know you speak to people who, if they're lucky, they get to eat meat once a month, and and then you know, doubling doubling meat consumption from once a month to twice a month is a very different um perspective than many people in the global north who eat meat multiple times each day. And so there's very that's that's a very real important point.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, uh it is what we observe. We understand there are even in Brazil, there is a major part of the population that uh basically cannot afford uh enough meat or beef that they were willing to eat. And we understand there is also uh another part of the population that is eating too much, so it might consider uh some benefits of the a more balanced diet. But uh it's not as straightforward as you have, for example, when you're talking to a population in Europe where basically uh protein, animal protein is already declining due to other demographic or cultural uh considerations.
SPEAKER_01:So um in terms of the the market side of things, and we've touched on changes in global population dynamics. Are you seeing changes in where the export demand is coming from for Brazilian produce as those population dynamics change?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Uh until the early 2000s, the major exportation export destination from Brazilian uh agricultural products, and I'll mention beef as well. It used to be the EU, it used to be Europe. Nowadays it's going mainly to Asia, especially to China. It's the market that is growing more, and most of the grain production and exports is going to there, and also animal protein, including beef. That follows a dynamic of population growth, and especially income uh rise from uh people coming from poverty to middle class, uh, is when they they increase more animal protein consumption and specifically that we are talking about beef. But there are also uh an important uh benefit of building those supply chains because if you take into consideration the the supply chain, the beef supply chain that exports to China nowadays in Brazil, there are some specific requirements in the protocol to export it. And one of them that it was designed to address Matt Cow's disease risk is that uh beef cattle should not be slaughtered later than 30 months old. If you take back 15 years ago, uh the average age of slaughtering in Brazilian beef cattle, it was much higher than 30 months, basically because it was extensive in grazing systems and sometimes not that well managed. But now this uh this beef that is being exported to China that we call here in Portuguese Boishina, it means China cows, something like that. Uh it became the benchmark for the producers because it's a growing market and requires some aspects of traceability, some aspects of uh maximum age of slaughtering and other uh conditions. If you are reducing the average age of slaughtering, you are producing uh a channel of uh a supply chain of lower methane intensity that it used to have. So there are good incentives provided when you are connecting to the international marketing, to a growing international market, because you're basically pulling from the market some specific aspects that usually uh pay pay more, uh pay a better price for for the goods sold, the farmers they redirect, they reshape the way they produce, they they manage their business to attend those requirements.
SPEAKER_01:And so with the the 30 months versus older, you you know, this is generally speaking, but generally speaking, younger, a younger animal is going to be more tender, it's gonna be less less chewy and have less, you know, would be have a better eating quality. You've got the fact that you know if you only have to feed it for a shorter period of time, there's less cost for the farmer. And then you've also got the fact that you know every day the animal is alive, it's emitting emissions, and if it grows very, very slowly, you end up with this very, very high time intensity. So in some ways, through just by putting that age limit there, you're you're creating wins for the consumers, you're creating wins for the environment, you take creating wins for for the product itself. So it's a quite a simple measurement system that you know, an age system that doesn't require that maybe fits into many, many of the of the production systems that are available in Brazil. So, how do you see that kind of fit-for-purpose kind of win-win-win um opportunity space?
SPEAKER_02:Well, that that's a good example of a win-win approach. Um but but let me uh add a another comment. This 30-month uh maximum age of slaughtering requirement actually is also uh required by other other markets. The European market requires that as well, but it's a declining market, so it does not have the it cannot pull the the way the Brazilians are producing because it's a declining market. It was a growing market or a better price market, perhaps. Yeah, so those are are the drivers if you can co couple though those conditions. And I understand that was possible to do because there was a uh the genetics was available to to achieve this 30 months old, and we just needed to increase productivity and just give this push so the the farmers take this into consideration. And I believe we can design together other types of of interventions as well.
SPEAKER_01:So in terms of how they achieve that, um you mentioned genetics, I imagine there's some management there. What's what are the what are the the the key kind of management or or tools that that are needed to further improve that?
SPEAKER_02:Well, uh the system uh of raising beef cattle in Brazil, basically uh the the cattle is is born in one farm, it's so it is sold to another farm and then to a third farm when it's fattened and terminated. If you can shorten that cycle by providing the right incentives for them to basically provide better uh forage, better uh pasture management and so on in all the phases, you can reduce that even more. That was achieved basing basically the the 30-month-old was achieved basically by good genetics with better pasture management and meal supplementation in the fattening and termination phase. Those are the the main uh the main interventions. It can be done on pasture, that's the most usual way to do it. You just bring them the meals in in parts of the the pasture, and the animals can feed on them, or you can confine them in in feedlots in this final phase of production. Usually 60 days, 90 to 60 days, they stay in this final phase of production. But there are other interventions, especially during the early phase, that we could uh we could uh increase the adoption of best practice and thereby reduce this average age of Zwagen.
SPEAKER_01:And in terms of that, those management techniques, the genetics, are they largely developed internally in Brazil, either through collaboration with Embrapa or by private companies, or is that something that you're importing from elsewhere in the world?
SPEAKER_02:No, it's both. We we did import genetics. So uh, well, during the the 1500s, the Europeans, especially the Portuguese, brought here uh cattle, it's not native from South America, uh, but the European breeds they suffer a lot from the heat ex heat stress that we have and the ticks that are uh broadly uh uh they infest the Midwest part of the country and several areas. Then during the late 19th century, we imported uh cattle, zebu cattle from India, and that was a game changer because although they were actually traction animals, they were dedicated to rural labor and not for production, we managed to mix those genetics and start to produce some uh beef cattle breeds that could be uh adapted to the conditions that we have in the Midwest part of the country. The main one is the is a breed called Nelori. It's a zebu breed from Bos Indicus. And now it's more mixed with also Angus breeds that comes from Bostaurus European breeds. So you have a mix, uh prevalence of zebuin breeds for beef cattle, but also an introgression of breeds of uh European breeds that bring them uh aspects better better characteristics for production. The same for dairy cattle, uh it's a mix of hosting with gurk, which is a zebu breed also, and those are the main breeds used in Brazil. They they were well established by during in the last five decades. So, since the 2000s, you have a very well-connected and a robust uh breeding uh system here in Brazil, together with especially Embrapa, some universities, and the private sector. So some strong associations for Zebu cattle, for deer cattle, and so on.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, everyone who I've ever spoken to about agriculture in Brazil has has pretty much everyone has has commented on Embrapa and how big an impact that organization has had. Um, which which my I've never been to Brazil, so I'm I'm speaking from what I've been told, but it it seems to have had been more impactful than many departments of ag in other in other parts of the world, um, from what I've heard. So do you want to tell us a bit more about Embrapa and and the history and and and what they've achieved?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it would be a pleasure. I'm actually a researcher from Embrapa. It's been just two years that I moved it to the Ministry of Agriculture. And it's it's part of the history not only of Embrapa but the country. So the if we have a successful trajectory in the agricultural sector in Brazil in the the last 50 years, part of it is due to the creation and the work of Embrapa. And I believe it was uh created as um a public, uh 100% public agence, but not directly uh linked to the government. It's what we call indirect man public management. So it's an independent agents linked to the government that gives them a longer perspective of uh for their strategic planning and their breeding programs and so on. It was also established in a highly uh distributed structure across Brazil. We have 43 RD units of Embrapa distributed in basically 25 of the 27 states of Brazil, federative units of Brazil. That really, and they are not located in capitals, they are in mostly in rural areas nearby the producers, and they they they were they are mission-oriented. So you have one unit dedicated to research in rice and beans, one unit dedicated to soybeans, one unit dedicated to beef cattle. So they were really close to the producers, to the productive chain, and took advantage of a major movement done by the government that was to move the capital from Rio de Janeiro to the city where I am right now today, uh, the city of Brasilia. Brazilia is basically the middle of the country. They set the middle of the country, and the population in Brazil, it it was since the 1500s, it was basically concentrated by the Atlantic coast and by the south, southwest part, southeast part. And they wanted to move to the Midwest part and to the north of Brazil to populate there due to security reasons. Okay, and they felt that moving the capital from Rio, which is by the coast, to the to the middle of the country, it would also be safer to have a federal capital there. But if you're going to move the capital of the country and moving people to this part, you should produce food. And there wasn't any technology available uh to produce in the conditions that we have in the Midwest part of the country during the 60s. Basically, it's a tropical region. The soils are chemically poor, they are acidic, they are high in uh in aluminum, you have a very concentrated rainy season and a very uh concentrated dry season. So uh you have to have the right genetics to work on that and also work with irrigation and other types of systems. So by creating Embrapa, incentivizing producers from moving to the south parts of Brazil, to the Midwest part, to be assisted by Embrapa, and especially during the 70s and the 80s, the early days of the creation of Embrapa. It was created in the early 70s, in 1973. Brazil sent abroad over 2,000 researchers to get their PhDs because basically we did not have, we just had a few, if any, uh PhD program for agricultural sciences. And most of them went to North America, to the US, and uh a huge part also went to Europe. There they learned about the the green revolution technologies, and since they were permanent staff of Embrapa, they had to bring back that knowledge and adapt it to the local conditions. I believe that was the key, because this type of capacity building that was implemented in the country allowed us to create from the 90s on several uh uh PhD programs for agricultural science that are now broadly recognized for excellence uh worldwide. And this is part of the work that Embrapa has has done. So working closely with the producers, taking advantage of a huge governmental move to populate the Midwest part and capacity building, learning from the global North Green Revolution and adapting it to the tropics.
SPEAKER_01:Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. I uh I had a person in my team when I was working for the Abu Dhabi government who was Brazilian and they they had done their PhD at Oxford um and all through through that whole and I learned um from them a lot about a lot about what was going on in Brazil and that whole thing with Embrapa. So um that combination of of you know the the investment, the being the the proximity to the actual farmers and the areas, plus that capacity building is is a very very powerful tool. Um before we go, is there anything else that you'd like to add that we haven't already discussed?
SPEAKER_02:Well, uh I would just like to highlight that we are in a very exciting moment here in Brazil. We are preparing the arrangements for COP30. The all the discussions domestically and internationally, they are very vibrant. We manage to bring the civil society, the private sector, and and all stakeholders from society to be part of those discussions and to push forward, hopefully, our negotiations and especially uh to drive action, uh climate action in the several sectors, including agriculture.
SPEAKER_01:Is there anything else you can share with us about the COP 30, the priorities, or or anything else you can share with us?
SPEAKER_02:Um about well, the priorities uh that's a good question. Uh this uh COP 30 should be a landmark to move the UNFCCC mandate from negotiations to implementation. We we just uh a couple of weeks ago during the bond meetings, uh the COP presidency released its its fourth letter, and it's dedicated to the a new design for the action agenda, basically uh connecting all the action agenda with the outcomes from the negotiations, specifically from the first global stocktake that was negotiated two years ago at COP28 in Dubai, and bringing in a collective global collective action, a mutirão, the words in Portuguese, all the initiatives that were created in previous years. We have over 400 of them to really showcase the results they have achieved so far, how we can together accelerate and scale up those results. And specifically for agriculture and food systems, we have three uh priorities that uh that were established. So the the first one is land restoration and sustainable agriculture, the second one is adaptation, resilience in production systems. And the the third one is about access to food and nutrition for all. So uh the specifics uh you're going to find in the the presentations made the COP by the COP presidency, and we from the Minister of Agriculture and Livestock here in Brazil, we are leading uh the initiatives, bringing together all the initiatives dedicated to land restoration and sustainable agriculture. We understand that's a broad issue that we have that connects the three conventions: the Convention to Combat Desertification, the Convention of Biodiversity, and UNSCC. And if we can accelerate action in and better manage those degraded areas for restoration, for production purposes, then we are going to have several benefits for the climate and the environment as well as food security. That's a possible pathway, we understand, for the whole world, especially for the global south, and which is the focus that we are talking here since the beginning, as you have mentioned, is where we faced uh some challenges regarding population growth, uh rising income, and of course the sustainability of food systems as a whole.
SPEAKER_00:Bruno, thank you. Thank you very much for joining me. Umbregato.
SPEAKER_02:Genada, it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure, Ash. Thank you, thank you very much. And if you need any more assistance, if it can be helpful in any other way, just just reach me, just tell me. Okay.
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