São Paulo – Fossil fuel-powered vehicles, waste burning, chemical fertilizers, livestock farming, and other activities that make up contemporary society life and drive the economy are among those responsible for releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. With higher temperatures, rainfall patterns change and become irregular or excessive and increasingly frequent, severe droughts, storms, and floods destroy crops, reduce production, and spike food prices. In other words, how the world produces food to feed itself has raised the planet’s temperature. In turn, this climate change affects and will further affect how society produces food to feed itself – so what do we do?
Mônica Sartori de Camargo, a scientific researcher of the São Paulo Agribusiness Technology Agency (APTA) of the state’s Secretariat of Agriculture and Food Supply in the Piracicaba region, recognized that higher temperatures and irregular rains are a challenge for agriculture. With a Ph.D. in Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, Camargo said it is vital to maintain permanent protection areas around farms and argued that with planning and technologies arising from new research, it is possible to overcome the elements and not be surprised by them. “Properly managing the soil, offering nutrients in balanced amounts for plants to grow in balance, choosing species suited to the location, creating contour lines and terraces in agriculture are ways of protecting the soil,” she explained, “and when you protect the soil, you also protect water, reducing river silting.”
The lack of water is precisely the main impact of climate change on plantations, which, in scientific terminology, is called water deficit. “With heat, plants need more water to grow and produce. In addition, there is a projection of reduced rainfall in several regions of the country, reducing the availability of this resource. We need to prepare and adapt our production systems to this new condition with techniques that help keep water in the soil and plants more resilient,” said forestry engineer and researcher Giampaolo Pellegrino, president of the Climate Change department of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and Water and Soil Ph.D.
An example of a resilient plant is cassava, a crop chosen by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as the food of the 21st century. Research by Jailson Lopes Cruz, Agricultural Sciences Ph.D., showed that the plant takes advantage of high concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere to alleviate the effects of drought. This implies the possibility of including cassava cultivation in new territories, such as in the semi-arid region, increasing the supply of the product. Camargo sees an opportunity to expand production, even with the climate crisis, on arable land in the African continent and Brazil. “The climate is favorable for a large part of crops throughout the year and could boost food production,” she said.
For Juliana Tângari, director of the Comida do Amanhã Institute, there is no doubt that the outlook is worrying, and she defends “producing food in agroforestry systems, agroecological systems that prioritize native foods or foods adapted to the local climate” as a viable strategy. We must also invest in processes to shorten the chain and bring the production of foods – especially the most perishable – closer to where the consumer is, that is, urban centers, where most food is consumed.”
Pellegrino also highlighted other sustainable techniques and systems, such as crop-livestock-forest integration. “These are techniques and practices that already exist, have already been tested, and promote the diversification and increase of production, improving the producer’s income and quality of life, in addition to reducing emissions and boosting the system’s resilience.” According to him, researchers are investigating ways to increase crop output, find solutions to mitigate the effects of global warming, reduce emissions, and adapt crops for future scenarios. “We don’t make predictions; we make projections based on plausible development scenarios, that is, what could happen, and based on them, we analyze risks and trends.”
“Research shows that it is not necessary to deforest to increase crop productivity, as with techniques, studies, and research, we can produce much more in the same land area,” said Pellegrino enthusiastically.
The researcher recognized there is a certain resistance when it comes to changing a culture. As an incentive for this to happen, he cited the ABC Program, a credit line created in 2010 for low-carbon agriculture, with differentiated interest rates aimed at farmers who implement initiatives and adopt production methods that help reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and, at the same time, increase adaptation to climate change. With agricultural financing, the plan includes strategies to share technological knowledge, conduct research and innovations, regularize land and environmental issues, disseminate informative advertising campaigns, and train technicians and producers.
Pellegrino also cited the Agricultural Climate Risk Zoning (ZARC), an essential tool in agricultural policy and managing risks linked to agriculture. Its purpose is to reduce the impacts arising from adverse weather conditions, enabling each municipality to identify the most favorable period for cultivating different crops, considering different types of soil and plant growth cycles. This approach, which is easy to understand and apply, is accessible to farmers, financial institutions, and other users involved in the industry.
It is estimated there are around 390,000 types of plants worldwide. In Brazil, there are approximately 46,000. Despite this diversity, throughout history, humanity has only used about a thousand as food sources. Currently, about 300 species are cultivated for various purposes, such as food, medicine, construction, and others. Of these, only 15 varieties (rice, wheat, maize, soybeans, sorghum, barley, sugar cane, beetroot, beans, peanuts, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, coconuts, and bananas) account for 90% of the global diet.
Tângari said that this is a crucial point: “It’s what we call food monotony. The monotony of how we consume food is related to the monotony with which we produce food. The biodiversity disaster is astonishing, not to mention the dependencies, concentration of markets, and distortions of the actual costs (side effects) of our agri-food systems.”
Concerning Brazil, Tângari said national production is still diversified or diversifiable, and many native species are still little consumed. “We certainly have room to reverse this situation. We also have to go through a process of dietary re-education and nutritional re-education to understand that eating more vegetables – and vegetables from Brazil – will be a good resilience strategy. The high consumption of ultra-processed foods, in addition to generating a pandemic of obesity and Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), is harming the planet.”
“We need to value food production – even if on a smaller scale and in more restricted products – in cities and urban areas. In the backyards that can and should produce food and food security,” said Tângari. “There will not be a single solution – we need to combine different strategies and have coherence in these strategies – they need to be aligned with the recognition that eating healthy is a universal right and that the climate crisis is both a cause and a consequence of how we eat.”
Camargo believes there will be no food shortage: “I think the issue of hunger is more related to the distribution of food and waste than the amount produced.” Pellegrino is confident there are reasons to be optimistic: “We are finding ways to adapt to changes. But we need a big effort to stop the planet’s temperature from rising.”
Special report by Paula Medeiros for ANBA
Translated by Elúsio Brasileiro
