Embrapa: The Pillar of Sustainable Development of Brazilian Agriculture

AgroPages has recently had an interview with the President of Embrapa, Mauricio Antonio Lopes, who shared his viewpoints on the market positioning, cooperation mode and competitive advantages of Embrapa, as well as future development planning.

Embrapa’s market positioning, development history and main business

Embrapa is the largest component of the Brazilian Agricultural Research System.  A semiautonomous federal agency administered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Supply, Embrapa is the largest agricultural R&D agency in Latin America in terms of both staff numbers and expenditure. The organization is headquartered in the capital Brasilia and operates 46 research centers localized throughout the country.

Embrapa, was created in 1973 to help Brazil overcome and then persistent problem of food insecurity. A concentrated research model was conceived, centered in strengthening capacity of human resources, and on advanced research centers in Brazil and strong scientific collaboration abroad.  The Embrapa model focused on products of economic importance, thematic areas and eco-regional resources that were translated into decentralized and specialized centers distributed throughout the country. Adequate research infrastructure (such as laboratory facilities) was built with the objective of maximizing applied research results and overall efficiency. At the same time the massive investments were directed to research and researchers’ training, financial resources for rural extension were not discontinued. In mid-1980’s States’ responsibility on agricultural research and on science generation at Agricultural Colleges were strengthened through the creation of the National Agricultural Research System, under Embrapa´s leadership. 

The applied agricultural science developed by Embrapa and partner organizations unveiled the constraints imposed by the poor acid soils of the Cerrado, the huge Savannah that dominates the central part of Brazil. New-crop varieties, adapted to low-latitudes and to soil and climatic conditions of the tropics, and modern inputs were increasingly incorporated into novel production systems. The intensification of agricultural mechanization, particularly in grain production, was also an important part of the development of Brazilian agriculture.  From its inception, Embrapa has generated a wealth of products, processes, information and services technologies for Brazilian agriculture, thus contributing to reduced production costs and helping Brazil to increase the offer of food, fiber and sustainable biofuels while conserving natural resources and the environment and diminishing external dependence on technologies, agricultural inputs and genetic materials.

Embrapa’s cooperation model with other companies

Embrapa considered, from its very beginning, that close cooperation with other institutions in research and commercialization was critical to its success.  Unlike many public research institutes and universities, Embrapa´s researchers were much less reluctant to engage in collaboration and commercialization efforts in partnership with the private sector. Embrapa’s mission orientation towards applied research and pursuit of impact, beyond simple publication of research findings and loose delivery of results to the market, helped this relation to grow over the years.  The most successful cases of public-private cooperation involving Embrapa emerged from its 72 breeding programs. Initial breeding research and development of prototypes are done in Embrapa’s testing farms or in partnership with its public and private partners.  Final delivery of new cultivars is done by private foundations and seed businesses.  More recently, the open innovation model, supported by the evolution of IPR policy in Brazil has become an important venue for cooperation. 

In 2015 Embrapa and German´s BASF released through an open innovation collaboration the first genetically modified soybean variety entirely developed in the Southern hemisphere. 

Today Embrapa has research and commercialization agreements with over 180 partners, public and private, national and international, pursuing development of new cultivars, advanced germplasm, new tools and machinery, precision agriculture solutions, and a variety of products, processes and services to empower Brazilian farmers and agribusiness.  The organization is requesting authorization of the Brazilian Government to initiate a private branch, called EmbrapaTec, a subsidiary company that will be responsible to strengthening its presence in the agricultural innovation market, in Brazil and abroad.

Embrapa’s successful cases/ projects on sustainable development of Brazilian agriculture

Responding to increasing concerns over agriculture´s footprint on the natural resource base, the agricultural research system in Brazil has taken important leaps, in a short period of time, towards development of innovations for increasingly safer and sustainable agricultural systems.  The country has become a leader in crop management based on minimum and no tillage systems, which significantly helps decrease erosion and improve general soil quality and groundwater recharge.  Biological nitrogen fixation, through inoculation techniques using a nitrogen fixing bacteria that colonizes the plant root, has led to a significant decrease in the amount of chemical fertilizers applied to crops such as soybean.  This, in turn, has significantly reduced environmental impacts such as water resources contamination with nitrates or other harmful elements.  Biological control, regularly used in a number of crops, such as soybean, sugarcane, cotton and fruit crops, has also reduced the need for chemical pest and disease control in several management systems, with a positive impact on the environment, rural workers’ quality of life and product safety and quality.  Over the last decades, plant breeding programs have allowed adaptation of crops to a wide variety of environmental conditions in the country. This has been achieved by incorporating adaptation to different latitudes, tolerance to acid soils – especially to toxic aluminium, increased efficiency in nutrient use (like phosphorus and nitrogen), as well as resistance and tolerance to pests and diseases that are especially severe in tropical regions.   These and many other innovations incorporated by the Brazilian agriculture allowed increased resource use efficiency, higher productivity and intensified use of land, reducing drastically the need to agricultural expansion at high environmental cost. 

The main opportunity for improvement in food production and productivity in Brazil is through sustainable land use intensification.  By using land already opened to agriculture in a more intensive way, through integration of crops-livestock and forestry, Brazil will enhance the use of its natural resource base, without further need to expand agricultural area. The country has already set a target to reduce the agricultural sector’s carbon dioxide emissions by 4.9 to 6.1 percent by 2020.  With its Agricultural and Livestock Plan 2010-2011, the country launched a Low Carbon Agriculture Program to stimulate agronomic practices that help environmental preservation and productivity enhancement, like recovery of degraded pastures and integration of crop, livestock and forestry.

Embrapa’s competitive advantages and development planning

During the last three decades, a large number of impact assessment studies have been developed in the world showing the contributions of agricultural research to the improvement of productivity, profitability and sustainability of the agribusiness. Brazil is one of the countries where this kind of study frequently appears, with particular emphasis to the contributions of Embrapa.  The importance of the agricultural research's role of Embrapa in the technological development of the agricultural sector in Brazil has been systematically shown through a diversified set of impact assessment studies developed not only by Embrapa economists but also by specialists from others research institutions and universities from Brazil and abroad.  Embrapa is generally considered a case of successful institutional innovation that has many distinctive characteristics: a public corporation model of organization, scale of operation at national level, spatial decentralization, specialized research units, enhanced training and remuneration of human resources and a vision of an agriculture based on science, technology and innovation. 

In its 40th birthday, in 2013, Embrapa has announced several institutional innovations aiming to prepare itself to the next 20 years. In a partnership with partners of the Brazilian Agricultural Research System, Embrapa launched in April 2013 the project “Alliance for innovation in Brazilian agriculture”. This initiative aims at getting more synergism in innovation projects at the same time it has the objective of “translating science into practice” more timely, reaching farmers and providing information to overall society more rapidly.  Embrapa’s R&D efforts move fast forward in a portfolio/arrangements model prioritizing RD&I actions focusing on important strategic themes to Brazilian society. R&D portfolio are further nested into “macro-themes”, which provide an interesting way to prospect, analyze and disseminate relevant information to the RD&I agenda. Such approach also helps to more rapidly and effectively respond to the multidisciplinary role that future agriculture will play, increasing relying on more complex and sophisticated knowledge, technologies and innovation models.