Brazil is poised to lead the global transition to a low-carbon economy, and agribusiness plays a key role in this process. However, to achieve this goal, it is essential to ensure that all stages of agricultural production chains are free of deforestation and other socio-environmental irregularities. Indeed, the effective implementation of full traceability in the production chain, from origin to final destination, is crucial to ensure this goal.
The Brazilian Coalition on Climate, Forests and Agriculture expresses its full support for the creation of the AgroBrasil+Sustainable Platform, an initiative associated with the Innovation, Sustainable Development, Irrigation and Cooperativism Secretariat (SDI) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (Mapa). This instrument plays a key role in promoting transparency and providing relevant public data related to the country’s rural production.
During recent interactions with SDI/Mapa, the Coalition had access to the proposal for the Platform, which was developed in cooperation with the secretariat, Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation) and Serpro (Federal Data Processing Service), recognizing it as a key instrument for the traceability of agricultural products, to meet national and international demands for competitive and sustainable food production, in harmony with the protection of ecosystems, and which could also provide grounds to set up incentives for sustainable and low-carbon production.
However, it is worth stressing that creating the Platform should not be an effort starting from scratch. It must take advantage of existing initiatives, such as the Observatory of Brazilian Agriculture and Livestock, operated by the ministry itself, and other technically solid and available databases, such as MapBiomas, developed by universities, companies and civil society organizations, whose information is used by several players, including public and private banks. It is essential to ensure that the Platform has a datalake with both an integrated and transparent database and the necessary functionalities to achieve its ambitious targets, considering the scope, scale, and periodicity of the data, especially those related to deforestation. To this end, the Coalition proposes to establish a technical advisory working group to enable an effective, multi-sectoral contribution to the development, testing and implementation of this new instrument.
Promoting effective and complete traceability, from the point of origin to the final destination in the supply chain, is essential to make the assumption of sustainable agribusiness viable. As one of the world’s largest commodity producers, Brazil has much to gain from linking progress in the agricultural sector to the promotion of transparency and sustainability.