To tackle climate change, agriculture aims for transformation
For the third consecutive year, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) is bringing the House of Sustainable Agriculture to a United Nations Climate Change Conference—COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan. The pavilion serves as a platform to discuss how agriculture can transform itself to face climate change.
The challenge goes far beyond new production practices, says IICA’s Director-President, Manuel Otero. In his view, the world needs to be shown that the sector is capable of committing itself to sustainability.
“To achieve this, we are working in different spheres, one of them being a new generation of public policies that recognize the new limits of agriculture as an environmentally responsible, nutritionally intelligent sector that keeps up with international trade in a socially responsible manner,” he said.
With this in mind, IICA brought to Azerbaijan visions and successful models from the 34 countries of the Americas that make up the institution. Throughout the days of the conference, the pavilion will welcome over 50 panels, bringing together hundreds of producers, academics, and representatives of governments and society.
Models
In his presentation of one of the models on the panel Climate Action: Producers’ Voices in the Fight Against Climate Change, Brazil’s Minister of Agricultural Development Paulo Teixeira took stock of the last four months of the National Program for Strengthening Family Farming, with the increase in food production through the financing of initiatives with lower greenhouse gas emissions, featured among the successful models.
Comparing the four-month span ending in October to the same period in 2023, the minister reported, results can already be seen.
“We have increased funding for organic farming by 28.5 percent, compared to a reduction of 23.7 percent for GM farming. We also had a 20 percent growth in machinery, equipment and implements—that’s BRL 6.3 billion in machinery financing for small farmers. We saw an expansion in the production of beans, onions, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots and a 14 percent reduction in the production of soy in family farming,” he detailed.
Funding
For the first time, IICA also hosted a panel during the official opening of COP29. Under the title Adaptation Through the Nature-Based Solutions Approach to Measuring Vulnerability and Risks in the Latin American and Caribbean Region, the meeting discussed how to make agriculture more sustainable and resilient to climate change.
“We want to be sustainable. And sustainability can only be achieved if we have a vision of transforming Brazil’s agricultural production, and this won’t happen on its own. It will happen with strategic public policies and financing that will make this transition possible,” said Roberto Azevedo, former director-general of the World Trade Organization.
In his opinion, the creation of a regulatory framework that financially rewards investments in the transition to a green economy is a way of making the sector more strongly committed to sustainable forms of production.
“If you have a regulatory system that sets minimum remuneration, indexing the price of the final product, with fuel blend that meets a given level—these can seem insignificant and independent from each other, but they’re not. Different frameworks will cause investors to make different changes according to what they’ll think is best for them,” he explained.
Technological development also plays a major role in making decarbonization possible in agriculture, he added.
“When it comes to sustainability, technology and innovation play an extremely important role, and they are changing day by day. You’ll find more advanced production methods and technologies that will improve and speed up this transition,” Azevedo added.
COP30 in Belém
In addition to exchanging experiences, Manuel Otero said, IICA is also working to create connections between people who can make this transformation in agriculture a reality. A meeting with Pará state governor Helder Barbalho, who will host COP30 in Belém in 2025, also sought to align agendas in Baku so that the next gathering of the Inter-American Board of Agriculture, with the 34 ministers of agriculture in the Americas, would be held in Belém, as part of the pre-COP agenda.
*The reporter traveled at the invitation of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).
