Brazil: efficiency key to green agriculture

Brazil has the most advanced agricultural science and technology system of the world's tropical countries, with an array of environmental and high-production solutions, but which rarely reach their intended target: the small farmer.

There is the bottleneck, admits Alfredo Barreto Luiz, a researcher who has served in various high-level posts at Brazil's national agricultural research agency, Embrapa, a network of 38 research centers and three outreach centers scattered across the country.

Embrapa was created 35 years ago with another government agency for rural extension services, but which was dismantled in 1990 although its tasks were not taken up by any government or local technical assistance body.

"The circle was broken," Barreto told Tierramérica, the circle that begins with the demands of the farmer, then turns into research at Embrapa, and is supposed to return with answers to the farms.

One example is the process of sustainable goat farming developed by the Embrapa center dedicated to the "semiarido" ecosystem of Brazil's poorest region, the dry Northeast.

Small farmers raise goats for meat through more efficient food management, sanitation and reproductive techniques, explained veterinarian Daniel Maia, one of the project's coordinators. The approach has been proven on two farms but has not been extended to more due to lack of resources, he told Tierramérica.

Goats are a good livestock choice for the Northeast, where there are 9.6 million head, and could be an important source of income for small farmers because the animals can be slaughtered for their meat at just seven months old. Beef cattle require more time to grow, more land and more money, which puts them beyond the reach of poorer farmers, said Maia.

He proposes crossing native breeds of goats with more productive, exotic goats, in groups and on a schedule in order to have animals of the same age. This would allow better control as the goats mature and improve marketing.

Local forage crops that can be stored ensure feed for the goats during the drier summer season and mean that there is enough for two goats per hectare -- more than double the usual rate.

In an effort to produce organic meat, the approach focuses on hygienic care and natural medicines, based on local plants and with proven effectiveness, with non-organic or synthetic medications used only as a last resort, said Maia.

OFFSPRING OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION

At the end of 2007, Embrapa employed 2,294 researchers and 6,338 assistants. It was founded to promote the "green revolution" and boost productivity with fully economic ends, and it was efficient at that, according to Tatiana Sá, a member of the executive board who has worked with the institution since 1974.

Nearly all the researchers were agronomists, until the 1990s, when the staff was diversified to include geologists, cartographers, statisticians and many other areas of expertise that had been scarce in Brazil. The agency was thus able to respond to new challenges of developing environmentally sustainable techniques and to the growing demands for autonomy, agrarian reform and local control, said Sá.

In that process new research and service units were also created, in the areas of environment, agro-biology and agro-energy. Embrapa was decisive in "adding science and security to tropical agriculture," although Brazil has the "privilege" of a wide range of ecosystems and climates, she said.

As such, this country has overcome its "technical inferiority" as a receiver of technologies from the industrialized world, and became part of two-way international cooperation, setting up virtual laboratories that serve as "antennae&qu