Country’s expertise can support leadership of global hunger alliance
03/19/2024
Knowledge of tropical agriculture is expected to be one of Brazil’s main contributions to the global alliance against hunger and poverty that the country coordinates within the G20 agenda. One bastion of expertise that Brazil intends to present is the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA), which has become an international reference in the area for 50 years.
Among the axes of action are technical training for the transfer of food production technologies in Latin American, Caribbean, and African countries. The idea is to establish cooperation to expand food production and contribute to the elaboration of national food guides.
Saulo Ceolin, general coordinator of food and nutritional security of Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, said that there is a history of South-South or multilateral cooperation in agriculture. Brazil typically provides knowledge to assist other countries, while a third group of nations contributes resources.
He rejected the notion that this policy could potentially damage Brazil’s commercial interests by creating competitors. “The countries with which Brazil cooperates in agriculture are among those with the highest rates of hunger and poverty,” said Mr. Ceolin. “In the past, this cooperation did not lead to competition. Instead, it created opportunities in several markets for [Brazilian] fertilizers and machinery.”
Brazil intends to leverage EMBRAPA, the agency linked to Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture to develop the technological basis of a tropical agriculture model, to reach Haiti and Panama. Countries that make up the Central American Dry Corridor—a tropical dry forest region along the Pacific coast covering Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala—are also seen as targets.
This year, with the G20, EMBRAPA will coordinate the “Macs – Meeting of Agriculture Chief Scientists,” one of the events in the agriculture working group. “Brazil has amassed deep knowledge in tropical agriculture and there is huge demand from countries in Africa, the Americas, and even Pacific islands for Brazil to export knowledge besides commodities,” said Marcelo Morandi, head of Embrapa International.
EMBRAPA’s internationalization agenda began by seeking developed countries to absorb the knowledge that could be adapted and applied to tropical climates, then sharing it with other countries through a joint action with the Foreign Ministry’s Brazilian Cooperation Agency.
“In several countries in Africa we brought cotton with system improvements because it was important to increase income and generate jobs. This also happened in countries in the Americas, such as Colombia and Bolivia. We also had a very interesting experience in Africa of groundwater dams for the use of rainwater, to create a reserve for the cultivation of several crops,” said Mr. Morandi. EMBRAPA has already had physical representation in Ghana and Panama, which no longer exist. Yet, the Brazilian agency is expected to set up a headquarters in Ethiopia by the second half of the year as part of a representation in the African Union.
Professor Mariangela Hungria, a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science (ABC), believes that combating hunger requires “urgent” support from science. “All areas need to talk to find solutions that meet the largest number of sectors. EMBRAPA has become a leader in tropical agriculture and this can be shared. The Brazilian Cerrado is similar to the savannas of Africa. This is what we researchers love, to see knowledge circulating,” said Ms. Hungria, who is also a researcher at EMBRAPA and coordinator of a book on the role of Brazilian science in combating hunger.
Brazil went off the FAO Hunger Map between 2014 and 2021 and returned to it in 2022. President Lula made reducing food insecurity a priority not only of his administration, but of the agenda he chairs in the group that brings together 19 major economies in the world, plus the European Union and the African Union (G20). The president believes that cooperation between different areas is the way to go.
In addition to knowledge transfer, the alliance to combat hunger is based on two other pillars: financial and autonomous, with proposals in which Brazil also seeks to replicate national experiences deemed successful by the government. Among them are conditional income transfer policies, along the lines of Bolsa Família, and school meals. The countries that join the global alliance will have to commit to implementing at least one of the policies of this basket under construction.
*Por Victoria Netto — Rio de Janeiro
Source: Valor International