Insight Focus
Brazil has launched its climate plan targeting net-zero emissions by 2050. The strategy includes specific guidelines for agriculture, expanding sustainable practices and strengthening low-carbon production systems. Key measures include recovering degraded pastures and scaling techniques such as no-till farming and integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems.
Last December, Brazil approved the Climate Mitigation and Adaptation Plan, which brings together a set of strategies to implement actions aimed at transitioning to a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions economy by 2050. The program includes 16 sectoral plans. Agriculture, family farming, and biodiversity are all part of the initiative.
The program’s launch occurs within a strategic context marked by the intensification of extreme weather events and increasing international regulatory pressure on agribusiness.
Source: Ministry of Regional Development, National Confederation of Municipalities.
In agriculture, the main guidelines are focused on strengthening sustainable practices, transforming the climate challenge into a competitive advantage. Solutions that are already showing encouraging results, such as the Sectoral Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change and Low Carbon Emissions in Agriculture (ABC+ Plan), are set to be expanded.
Established in 2020 as an evolution of the initiative launched in 2010, the ABC+ Plan aims to encourage practices such as the recovery of degraded pastures and the no-till farming system, in which the straw maintained on the surface helps conserve soil nutrients.
No-till farming system
The integrated crop-livestock-forestry system also stands out as a sustainable strategy that combines agricultural, livestock and forestry activities in the same area, whether through intercropping, succession or rotation. This practice is growing in Brazil, optimising land use and improving soil fertility.
Source: Embrapa
The Plano Safra, which offers subsidised interest-rate loans to the agricultural sector, already includes lines of credit directly aimed at sustainable practices, such as integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems. BNDES, in turn, offers RenovAgro, with pre-fixed interest rates of up to 8.5%—well below the basic interest rate, which is 15%—for the recovery of degraded areas and the implementation of sustainable forest management.
The logic of the Climate Plan is precisely to expand and strengthen this type of economic instrument, which facilitates the transition to low-emission practices.
One of the fundamental pillars of the plan is the recovery of degraded pastures. The strategy makes considerable sense: the country has millions of hectares of pastures in different stages of degradation with the potential to become productive areas, reducing the need to expand agricultural frontiers. Brazil has already been moving positively in this direction.
Source: MapBiomas.
In 2023, a public program was created to convert degraded pastures into sustainable systems, with instruments such as special financing lines and technical assistance. The Climate Plan should provide additional financial resources and training for rural producers.
Implementation Will Determine Plan’s Impact
In general, the initiative represents an opportunity for significant advances in Brazilian agribusiness. If its guidelines are implemented as planned, they could facilitate compliance with new international regulations, such as the EUDR.
The regulation, which is expected to be implemented by the end of this year, will require proof that products imported by the EU have not contributed to deforestation.
The Climate Plan should also stimulate advances in environmental certification and the adoption of more robust traceability processes, which tend to reduce regulatory risks. With this, contractual predictability and premium payments linked to sustainability can be expanded.
The success of the Climate Plan, however, will depend on aspects such as methodological transparency, realistic sectoral targets, and clear investment estimates. The initiative may go down in history as an instrument of strategic leadership or as a rhetorical piece. The difference will lie in the quality of its implementation.
