Embrapa: The Brazilian Agriculture Research Corporation

Part of my mission travelling in South America is to learn about international agricultural practices. Today I had the priviledge to spend the afternoon with a Technical Cooperation Sector Coordinator at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) which is a government company under the Ministry of AGriculture, Livestock and Food Supply.

The only knowledge that I had of Brazilian agriculture prior to my arrival was from an article I read in the New York Times last year. It said that Brazil is reaping the benefits today of an agricultural plan that was put into effect in the 1970s to convert their cerrada, a tropical savannah, into productive agricultural land.

At Embrapa today I learned that one of the driving forces to make this happen was a relationship between the Japanese and Brazilian's to develop technology to be able to grow soya in the Brazilian cerrado so that the Japanese market wouldn't be so dependent on the US production of soya.

Embrapa is devided into two sectors; 1) the technical cooperation sector which oversees projects with developing nations primarily in Africa and 2) the scientific cooperation sector which works in partnership with other developed nations to achieve common goals through agricultural research.

The way a technical cooperation project would work is a developing country would approach the Brazilian government to receive some of their funding for international agrarian support. Embrapa would then take on the project and develop a project plan. The two countries would meet and revise the plan and then start the implementation a few years later. For example, the person with whom I was meeting focuses on the middle east. A project that he recently did in Afghanistan was to help them recreate agricultural zoning in their nation.

In Canada we have agricultural zoning to the effect that certain lands have been designated only for agricultural use. However, my understanding is that a farmer or company can do whatever type of agricultural work they so desire on these lands and still be eligible for government subsidies. In Brazil the zoning works differently. Here the government has zoned the specific climatic and soil regions based on what products can optimal be grown or raised there. In order to receive government support should crops fail etc, a farmer must grow exactly what has been advised at exactly the advised time in these regions to be eligible. This is what they are trying to recreate in Afghanistan so that the land is being optimally used.

The scientific cooperation sector works side by side with developed countries to improve agricultural knowledge and technology. A good example would be the Japan-Brazil soya project in the past. Here the Brazilians and Japanese together were developing a soya plant that could withstand the irrigation, soil and temperature conditions of the cerrado. There are a lot of scientists in this sector.

I was visiting the Embrapa headquarters today that performs most of the administration of the various departments. There are Emprapa departments all over the country that focus on very specific agricultural products or agricultural regions in the country and try to gather as much research and develop as many agricultural growth options as possible.

Here is a list of the different departments: agrobiology, agroenergy, agri-food industry, tropical agri-food industry, western region livestock, agro-silvi-pasture, cotton, rice and beans, coffee, goats and sheep, cerrado region, temperate climate region, palms, studies and training, forests, beef cattle, milk cattle, vegetables, research print materials, research information, agricultural instruments, cassava and fruit, environment, middle north region, maize and sorghum, sattelite monitoring, south region livestock, south east region livestock, fishing and aquaculture, genetics and biotechnology, semi arid region, soybeans, soils, pigs and poultry, coastal table region, technology transfer, wheat, grape and wine, and provincial departments that focus of forests.

As you can imagine I was overwhelmed by the specificity of many of these departments. The transfer of technology was particularly interesting, because it is they that must do all the sharing of information accross nations from any of the other departments.

I was given some interesting literature about some of Embrapa's current projects such as their current techonological cooperation project with Morrocco to develop and produce biofertilizers for inoculating and improving food legume productivity. Another was is in Mozambique (which I didn't realize was a Portuguese speaking nation) to strengthen the agriculture sector in the country including adapting Brazilian varieties and technologies, developing the insitutional capacity of the Mozambique Agrarian Research Institute and its researchers and technicians.

I was also impressed that Embrapa has international offices and laboratories. Their laboratories, exclusive for research are in France, England, South Korea, and the US. And their technological offices are in Ghana, Mozambique, Mali, Senegal, Venezuela and Panama. I also met a woman who is going

No Canadian relations as far as we could tell which I would have been interested to learn about.

I got to spend some time also in their reading room where I picked up one of the few English books which was about the history and development of cassava in Brazil. Apparently the food originated here and there is a lot of mystery about how it originated since the plant has never been found in the wild, and the natives were already farming the plant successfully when the Europeans landed many centuries ago.

One question I had was why we do not grow cassava in Canada and the reason is that the plant takes 8 - 12 months to mature in warm climates, which we would not be able to offer. When I shared this newly learned information with my Embrapa host, he said it would be the perfect opportunity to develop a species of cassava that can grow either more quickly or endure harsher conditions like they did with the soya. My organic mind doesn't think that way yet, but he has a point!

I was very impressed with the information and time I spent at Embrapa and look forward to my next international agricultural lesson.