New initiative aims to boost production chains in Brazil’s bioeconomy
Brazil’s Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, and Supply launched a program dubbed Bioeconomia Brasil Sociobiodiversidade. The initiative aims to bolster production chains that make sustainable use of natural resources and generate income for small- and medium-scale producers and traditional communities.
“We want to approach the activities they’ve been carrying out as production chains in Brazil’s primary sector. We’re going to think about ways to increase added value and generate income for producers, miners, and members of riverside communities at the far end—as well as to think about how to develop sector of agricultural industry and to reach international markets,” said Fernando Schwanke, the ministry’s secretary for Family Agriculture and Cooperation.
The launch took place during the opening ceremony of Green Rio, a yearly business fair held since 2012, which brings together exhibitors, lecturers, entrepreneurs, and representatives of bioeconomy. The event is free of charge and open to everyone, and is slated to end on Saturday (May 25), in Rio de Janeiro.
Schwanke explained that the program comes to revamp another extractivism-based initiative inherited from the Environment Ministry and to overhaul family agriculture to further bolster the Brazilian economy. Approximately $200 million dollars circulate in the economy thanks to the sector, he reported, adding there is potential for further growth.
“It’s been said that açaí alone can handle $2.5 billion. Of all production chains we’re talking about, this may be the one which best managed to organize itself to serve both domestic and international markets,” he said.
Family agriculture, he added, plays an important role in the use of Brazilian social and biological diversity in the creation of high added-value products which can be used in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics industry, for instance.
Projects
The program entails five projects covering extractivism, social and biological diversity, renewable sources of energy in family agriculture, and Brazilian special herbs.
No estimates have been disclosed on much investment will be made. “Maybe the connections are even more important than the money. We need to bring all actors into alignment and, who knows, even bring international funding into it, for instance, from the World Bank, or the Inter-American Development Bank. We have a number of measures directed at the organization of these production chains in the ministry,” he went on to say.
Deal
A special focus will be placed on logistics. “We’re talking about products that leave the forest and reach a village, and often have to be transported 1 to 3 thousand km before reaching its market,” he noted.
Green Rio
Green Rio Coordinator Beatriz Martins Costa says the news disclosed by the Agriculture Ministry will make up the main highlights of the event. “There are lots of bioeconomy programs across the world, but I don’t know of any other with the same perspective and focus on family agriculture and cooperation. This is strategic for Brazil,” she said.
She said the first edition of the event came about alongside Rio+20, the UN conference on sustainable development, held in 2012 in Rio de Janeiro. At the time, the concern was to make room for debate about bioeconomy, including a discussion on ever scanter resources. “It ranges from organic goods to renewable energy—like biomass, for instance,” she explained.
The event brings producers and consumers closer together. Attending the fair, the Rio de Janeiro Social Service for Trade (Sesc Rio), is holding workshops on good practices of sustainable economy, and their scope includes ways to reuse coffee capsules, leather, fabric, and plastic.
