Rio+20 pushes agroecology José Pedro Martins 6/21/2012 Organic production is gaining ground in the country that is the world leader in pesticide use.

On the eve of Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development that took place in Rio de Janeiro, the National Health Surveillance Agency, or ANVISA, released a report stating that Brazil consumes 20 percent of pesticides worldwide. The country takes first place in usage, ahead of the United States with 17 percent. In 2010 alone, Brazil accounted for US$7.3 billion in pesticide sales, compared with $5.12 billion in the United States.

This information on Brazil’s strategic importance in the world pesticide market lent support to the debate about the need to foment organic farming, or agroecology, which doesn’t use chemical products in the production process.

The discussion on the effects of pesticides on the health of Brazilians is increasingly worrying. ANVISA is eyeing a cooperative agreement with International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, which would focus on investigating possible links between illnesses and the presence of pesticides in foods.

In 2011, the Ministry of Health documented 8,000 cases of poisoning from pesticides in Brazil. One especially alarming number is the increase in poisoning among women, although men are still the most affected because they deal more directly with the chemicals.

All of this bolstered the debate over incentives for organic farming during Rio+20. The week before the conference, in Nuremberg, Germany, there was a meeting organized by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, or UNCTAD, addressing strategies for greater outreach and dissemination of organic agricultural products — which are predominantly located in developing countries.

Two million farmers around the world are certified organic, and 80 percent of those are in developing countries, according to UNCTAD. These countries also account for 73 percent of the areas certified for organic beekeeping and harvesting of vegetables grown in the wild. Organic products amount to $60 billion in sales annually.

Loss of fertile land
Organic farming was fundamental to the two main issues discussed at Rio+20: the transition to a green economy and the fight against poverty. Care in handling the soil, avoiding the use of chemicals and applying techniques such as crop rotation, are also essential for one of the main global environmental challenges today: land deterioration.

It’s estimated that billions of tons of fertile land are lost every year around the world, generally carried off by rivers that end up full of silt. Appropriate land management therefore has a positive impact on maintaining fertile land and protecting water. In Brazil, according to the Environmental Quality Program by the state’s Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, or Embrapa, loss of fertile land is already at 840 million metric tons a year and rising, due to new areas that are being opened to agriculture, especially in the country’s mid-west and Amazon regions.

It was no coincidence that Nuremberg hosted the UNCTAD meeting the week before Rio+20. The city has been the location in recent years of BioFach, the largest organic product fair in the world. During the last event, in February 2012, it attracted over 2,500 exhibitors in nine pavilions. Ten companies comprising the Proyecto Organics Brasil represented Brazil.

Coffee, cacao, brown sugar, juice, fruit, tea, honey, liquor, cosmetics and clothing were some of the Brazilian products on display in Nuremberg, representing a variety of what organic farming is already producing in Brazil.
Despite being one of the large agricultural producers in the world (with annual production of approximately 150 million metric tons of grains, legumes and oilseeds), Brazil still has only a small organic product market, though it is increasing because of growing health concerns and environmental benefits from organic farming.

The Maranguape Ecomuseum, in the staet of Ceará, is one of the organizations pushing for organic farming in northeastern Brazil. The encouragement of a new agricultural model is part of the activities of the Ecomuseum, conducted with children and adolescents in the rural district of Cachoeira, as part of Integral Education Program. It promotes a healthy lifestyle, and is carried out by the Together for Education Foundation.

In 2008, Brazil had 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres) of organic farmland distributed among 7,250 certified producers, according to the International Foundation for Organic Agriculture, or IFOAM. Of these lands, 52 percent were certified farms and the rest were areas in transition. The total cultivated area in Brazil in 2008 for grain was about 46 million hectares (115 million acres). The country has about 90 million hectares (225 million acres) of arable land, indicating the growth potential of organic agriculture in Brazil.

But there is still no complete data about the state of organic agriculture in Brazil. This will now be possible with the creation of the National Register of Organic Products, provided for in Brazil’s Organic Farming Law of 2003, for which the regulatory procedures were only established in 2007. The law sets out what can actually be characterized as organic.

From producer to consumer
A major change introduced by the law and its regulations is the possibility of direct sales from producers to consumers, for example in open markets, even if that producer is not certified but is registered with the Ministry of Agriculture and follows the principles of organic farming on their property.

This change “was very important to stimulate the sector, as many farmers, mostly families, sometimes lack the resources to pay for the certification process,” says José Antonio Azevedo Espindola, a researcher at Embrapa’s National Agrobiology Research Center.

Espindola said that the law and its regulations have also created the possibility that the farmers themselves, in an organized manner, can verify if other producers are following the principles of organic farming. These community experiences are already taking place around Brazil, he said, stimulating the sector.

Increased certification, which touches on many technical issues, is certainly one of the challenges of expanding organic farming in Brazil. Certification is granted by the organizations that are in the Brazilian System of Organic Conformity Assessment under the Ministry of Agriculture.

Another of the challenges to growth in the organic market is the price of the products which, due to the scale of farming, is greater for organic products than for conventional ones. But that can be changed with a series of actions, according to Espindola.

He cited the need for more research, focusing on technology in the sector for example to deal with pests and land management.

Another would be to expand the dissemination of concepts and possibilities of organic farming for farmers in general, in part through rural extension services, “and develop and implement public policies to stimulate the market,” said Espindola. He added that one way would be to include organic products in school meals or hospital menus to help bring these foods to the mass market. —Latinamerica Press.