Brazil Exports Technology While Farmers at Home Do Without

• by Mario Osava (rio de janeiro)
• Friday, May 07, 2010
• Inter Press Service

Poverty, including lack of schooling, information and integration into modern society, means that 3.3 million Brazilian farms are worked by people who are 'unable to assimilate the technologies' that could increase their productivity and earnings, according to Pedro Arraes, the president of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA).

Tied to the struggle for survival, what they need are social policies, including ones that can help 'boost their very low self-esteem,' said Arraes, citing as an example the Bolsa Familia programme, a government subsidy ranging from 22 to 200 reals (12.50 to 115 dollars) a month, granted to 11 million poor households.

A minority of 480,000 out of Brazil's 5.2 million farming units takes in 75 percent of all agricultural revenue, the expert said. This group of farmers has access to the technologies developed by EMBRAPA, a state agency founded in 1973.

Another 900,000 farms belong to a sort of middle layer that could join the élite if it acquires the available technologies, Arraes said. The rest of the farming population will need a diverse range of public policies to improve their living conditions and educational level so as to benefit from the country's technological progress, he said.

But spreading agricultural techniques to millions of farmers is not a task for a scientific institution like EMBRAPA, which must concentrate its resources on research, he said. It is a job to be done by rural extension, which in the past was structured as a national organisation, but was dismantled in 1990 and is now in the process of being reconstructed.

EMBRAPA is the main source of the know-how that led to a threefold increase in Brazil's output of cereals, beans and oilseeds in the last three decades, with only an eight percent expansion in the area sown.

Technology was a decisive factor in this leap in productivity, although full use of it was made by less than 10 percent of rural landowners.

Today Brazil is the recognised world leader in tropical agriculture. By 2025 it should be 'the world's largest food producer, with sustainable agriculture and preservation of biodiversity,' Arraes, an agronomist specialising in genetic improvement, told foreign correspondents this week.

Once five new units open this year and next, EMBRAPA will consist of 45 research centres covering every ecosystem and all the different crops and livestock types currently or potentially raised in Brazil.

One of the units under construction is an Agroenergy research centre, in response to the global expansion of ethanol, biodiesel and other biofuels. Another is for Strategic Studies and Training in Tropical Agriculture, aimed at improving the focus of research and responding to domestic and foreign demands for technology transfer.

EMBRAPA's success, confirmed by soaring exports, has awakened more interest abroad in technical cooperation than the Brazilian agency can currently handle, Arraes admitted. An increasing number of its researchers now work in other countries, especially in Africa.

As well as participating in dozens of projects in close to a score of African countries, EMBRAPA opened a regional office in Accra, the capital of Ghana, in 2006.

Africa has not only contributed ethnically and culturally to Brazil, but also a large proportion of the grasses that Brazilian cattle feed on are of African origin, said the institution's president.

Now Brazil is returning the favour by contributing its agricultural techniques and crops to the continent. Many African countries are interested in the 'tropical carrot', a variety adapted to Brazilian soil and climate conditions that are a close match to those in many areas of Africa.

EMBRAPA has also created a programme called Virtual Laboratories Abroad (LABEX) in countries as varied as the United States, the Netherlands and South Korea, as a means of increasing its scientific and technological ties with advanced research organisations around the world.

The programme is 'virtual' in that instead of building a laboratory overseas, EMBRAPA sends Brazilian experts to spend a few years at centres of excellence in agricultural research and development abroad, working on research projects of mutual interest. It is designed as a two-way collaboration, with both countries benefiting from the exchange.

The emphasis on agricultural development in Brazil, represented by EMBRAPA, does not result in the kind of social progress brought about by industrialisation, in terms of employment, education, social discipline and other gains made by developed countries. Brazil has made more industrial progress than other Latin American nations, but this is still limited in some sectors and areas of the country.

However, advances in tropical agriculture may be of vital importance in the future, as a key to food security and human survival in the face of climate change.

EMBRAPA has managed to adapt temperate-climate crops to Brazil's tropical climate, said Arraes; for instance, apples and pears are grown in an irrigated area of the northeast of the country.

Now the need is to make further progress in adapting essential crops to higher temperatures and longer droughts, Arraes concluded.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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