On a bare patch of red soil in the state of Sao Paulo, Paola Costa is trying to turn back time. Five hundred years ago, this land was part of Mata Atlantica, a dense and diverse rainforest that covered 15% of Brazil’s territory. Its trees stretch more than 2,000 miles along the East Atlantic coast and far inland. But today, 93% of the forests have been cleared, most of which have been converted to monoculture agriculture. Costa, a 36-year-old biologist, pounded the ground with his fist: the ground was hard, dry, eroded by the tropical sun.
However, on this sultry morning in March 2022, several green shoots had already broken through the ground. The rainforests are making a comeback. “It will be beans. It will be millet. These will be radishes,” she said, stroking them lovingly. “They will bring the soil back to life.”
This is not just a reforestation project. This is also a farm. These green pioneers will soon be joined by shrubby coffee trees, large-leaved banana trees and native trees such as the robust deciduous twin or tall phoebe. As they grow, some plants use their roots to transport underground nutrients to the topsoil, while others provide shade and absorb moisture from the atmosphere. Most of them produce crops for sale. “Everything has a function,” Costa said.
She and 41-year-old forest engineer Walter Ziantoni are experts in agroforestry, a method of growing food and other things people need by mimicking natural ecosystems. In 2021, the couple began setting up an agroforestry system on degraded farmland around the town of Thimburi. Their goal is to implement new farming methods on 2,500 acres of former Mata Atlantica land by 2025.
Agroforestry is very similar to how indigenous people managed the land that was Brazil for thousands of years. That was until the 20th century, when leaders of European descent began calling on citizens to “conquer the forests,” including Mata Atlantica in the north of the country and much of the Amazon rainforest. The goal is to replace diverse landscapes with monoculture crops with more immediate profit potential, a goal that has become more entrenched in recent years under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. From 2019 to 2022, it suspended policies aimed at protecting rainforests and indigenous communities, causing deforestation to increase by 60% each year.
Ironically, the tree-cutting strategy has plunged Brazilian agriculture into a crisis of its own making. The country’s rainforests play a key role in maintaining a humid and stable climate conducive to plant growth. Trees store water in their roots and release it when the surrounding air is hot, helping to cool the earth and create “flying rivers” that carry moisture throughout South America.
But from 1985 to 2021, Brazil’s natural land cover fell from 76% to 66%, leaving the region hotter and drier, with serious consequences for farmers. From June 2021 to June 2022, the worst drought in a century reduced agricultural incomes across Brazil by 5.5% compared to the previous year. This is no small feat: A study published in 2021 found that rising global temperatures will deprive more than half of Brazil’s farmland of optimal growing conditions by 2030, affecting production and profits in an industry that accounts for 29% of the country’s GDP. .
More and more farmers are looking at agroforestry as a solution. Planting trees near crops is like installing air conditioners and sprinkler systems, or, in the words of one famous farmer, “planting water.” In 2016, Costa and Chiantoni founded Preta Terra Consulting, the first of its kind in Brazil, to help farmers transition to agroforestry. Funding comes from NGOs, corporate charities and companies seeking to clean up their supply chains, such as Nestlé and cosmetics brand Natura. Since then, dozens of similar companies have emerged, as well as startups that provide financing to farms, and large agricultural producers are launching agroforestry pilot projects as climate concerns impact their production. Public attention is also growing: in 2022, the popular Brazilian soap opera Pantanal tells the story of a young agroforestry enthusiast who convinces his father to fix his unsustainable farm.
Agroforestry is growing in popularity throughout the tropics, from Peru to Cameroon and Indonesia, with hundreds of small projects popping up across Europe and the US. In many places, Aboriginal communities are leading the way.
Brazil’s position at the forefront of the global movement may be about to be strengthened: On January 1, left-leaning former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to power after defeating Bolsonaro in October elections. Lula’s team proposed a series of agricultural credits to stimulate “movement towards carbon-neutral agriculture.” Supporters hope they will benefit agriculture and forestry.
Looking at the green plants growing in the fields of Timburi, Chiantoni feels optimistic. “We want our impact on the landscape to be as big as possible,” he said. “We want to convert all agriculture in the world to agroforestry.” Agroforestry is a labor-intensive industry that requires complex diversification of local supply chains. But experts say it could be a lifeline for agriculture in a hotter, drier world. “Changing the way a person thinks is a huge challenge,” Costa said. “But it becomes much easier when the status quo no longer works.”
Preta Terra had no trouble convincing coffee producer Nestor Porfirio from Timburi to join its project. His family has farmed 52 acres of rolling land for more than a century, but today conditions have become tougher. “It used to rain every December and January. But now we don’t know when it will go,” he said. If there is no rain during the flowering season of Porfirio coffee, its bushes will produce fewer berries. Recent summer temperatures of up to 105°F have also slowed their growth. “If the weather continues like this, it’s really worrying,” he said.
But Porfirio noticed that the few non-coffee trees he planted around the property tended to cool down the surrounding plants. On a larger scale, the impact of trees can be enormous: A 2021 study found that in the tropics, when large numbers of trees are cut down, temperatures in nearby farmland can rise by 8.1°F, affecting temperatures nearly 4 miles away.
As a test, Porfirio bought a new plot of land, and Costa and Chiantoni helped design a field in which a variety of crops could grow. He grows coffee, which grows best in partial shade, next to a number of native trees that provide timber, guava or araça (a sour yellow fruit). Meanwhile, he grows cassava, pigeon peas, ice cream beans and moringa trees, keeping the soil moist by absorbing water and fertile by drawing nutrients from deep underground.
When creating the designs, the couple started with a database of thousands of plant species. The consulting firm’s 14 employees also gather information about local climates, regional produce markets and the types of plants clients prefer to grow. Preta Terra already works with more than 150 small farmers around the world, approximately 30 NGO projects and three large producers in Brazil. Zianthoni says that many clients, especially the indigenous communities they have worked with in Timburi, Peru and the Brazilian Amazon, already have extensive knowledge of how different plants will affect their land: “We try to codify local and ancient knowledge and adapt it to our modern climate challenges.”
Switching to agroforestry is an investment. A 2020 study by the non-profit World Wildlife Fund (WWF) studied Amazon rainforest farmers who switched from soybean monocultures to agroforestry and found that planting the new system would cost between $1,060 and $1,180 per acre, much higher than the cost per acre. Growing soybeans costs hundreds of dollars per acre per year. Ongoing labor costs are also higher; many plants need to be trimmed regularly, and when plants grow densely, it is more difficult to use machines. In addition, they need to be collected several times a year. But thanks to increased productivity and increased yield, the return on investment was approximately doubled, and the installation costs were recouped within two years.
Preta Terra saw similar results in a 2018 project in the northern Amazon state of Pará: a cassava farmer switched from slash-and-burn methods, in which forest trees are burned to make room for crops, to agroforestry. Costa said they expect annual income per acre to increase from about $520 to more than $2,400. And she notes, “With slash and burn, you can only use the land for a maximum of three years before it stops producing and you have to abandon it.”
Economic growth is driven in part by growing consumer demand for environmentally friendly products. The reputation of Brazilian agriculture has been tarnished by the accelerated destruction of the Amazon region under Bolsonaro’s leadership. . In December 2021, six major European grocery chains announced they would remove Brazilian beef products from their shelves after an investigation found suppliers were linked to deforestation in the Amazon. In September 2022, the European Union voted to ban the import of all goods linked to deforestation.
Agroforestry offers a sustainable alternative: as agroforestry grows, plants absorb carbon and store it in the soil, whereas traditional farmers must till the soil to release nutrients, thereby releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere. Because plants are pruned to keep them growing, and many trees in agroforestry systems are used for timber and replaced regularly, scientists say the system may even sequester more carbon than natural forests. This allows farmers to sell carbon credits to businesses that want to offset their emissions.
For Cecilia Whately, a medium-sized avocado grower near Timbury, all these factors will influence whether she expands her 62-acre Preta Terra pilot farm into a full 370-acre avocado farm. She said reduced rainfall has led to a 30 to 40 percent drop in crop yields. Reducing the area under avocados will initially lead to their further reduction. But it will have higher yields and new products to sell (probably fruit), and it could command higher prices in European supermarkets for its robust exports. “I really hope this works, and if it works, others will follow,” she said. “That’s what farmers do: we always look over the fence into each other’s gardens.”
The transition to agroforestry is not easy. Ludmila Rattis, an expert on deforestation and agriculture in Brazil at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, said Costa and Chiantoni’s goal of transforming global agriculture into agroforestry could be “really a dream.” “But we are in the early stages. Agroforestry must adapt to the many social and environmental changes in Brazil.” Care of agroforestry systems. In other regions, such as the arid Northeast, ambitious agroforestry projects have failed due to a lack of training among farmers accustomed to monocultures, Latis said.
Chiantoni agrees that lack of education is a major barrier. He said Preta Terra provides ongoing site visits and technical support to its customers, and the company also has an academy offering online and face-to-face courses. The goal is to train farmers and attract unemployed people from urban areas into the agricultural workforce.
The biggest challenge, however, is the supply chain. Regional agricultural industries tend to focus on only a small number of products. In Brazil, the southeast is dominated by coffee, the southwest by wheat, and the center and Amazonas by soybeans and corn. If farmers start growing guava, there may not be a buyer within hundreds of miles to process or sell it. Timburi is extraordinarily lucky: in addition to the coffee and avocado markets, it is also close to the port that ships its produce to Europe, and is just a four-hour drive from Sao Paulo, a city of 22 million people. However, to reap the new fruits of the project, a processing center will be required; Preta Terra is working with local officials and business leaders to create it. Costa said replacing much of mainstream agriculture with agroforestry would require “a complete restructuring at the national level.”
The powerful forces needed to push for such a reorganization may already be joining the cause. A lot of money is invested in agriculture and forestry. Cargill, the US agribusiness giant that has been repeatedly linked to deforestation in Brazil, is financing the Timburi project along with Swiss investment bank UBS. In 2022, Preta Terra began a nearly 3,000-acre project funded by two investment funds in Mato Grosso, a large state on the southwestern edge of the Amazon, hoping to prove the large-scale economic viability of agroforestry.
Preta Terra hopes Timburi will show what they can do. “We already have everything – producers, markets and consumers – we just need to connect them,” Costa said. “If we can do this across the region, we will have a success story that can be replicated elsewhere.”
It can be tricky, but avocado producer Vitelli says there aren’t many options. Minas Gerais is a large state bordering Sao Paulo that was once a heavily forested area. “Part of it looks like prairie now. If we don’t do something to change that in the next 10 to 20 years, it’s going to be the same thing here: everything will be prairie.”
Post time: Dec-28-2023