Abstract:Agroecological practices have been widely promoted as an alternative to the hegemonic agri-food system, yet they also can help to 'green' the system. To strengthen a transformative agroecology, Latin American activists have promoted the concept desenvolvimento territorial rural (DTR or rural territorial development), which has different versions. The dominant version advocates broad multi-actor coalitions to strengthen DTR and thus benefit poor people, yet this obscures rival territorial agendas. An antagonist… Show more
“…In the 2000s, family farming embodied, through a social class perspective, the counterpoint to an S&T system at the service of dominant agribusiness interests. At present, the contestation of the dominant model is best articulated by the agroecology movement, which albeit relatively confined inside Embrapa has in recent years expanded considerably in Brazil (Levidow et al, 2019; Petersen et al, 2013). Embrapa’s agroecologists, however, still face considerable internal resistance and prejudice, as a researcher at Embrapa Cerrados explained:Embrapa was created during the military regime and the training of many researchers was very conventional, very conservative.…”
Motivation
The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, Embrapa, is well known for incorporating the Cerrado into Brazil’s modern agriculture through its discoveries of how to improve infertile soils and to develop soybean seeds adapted to the tropics. Known as the Tropical Revolution, Brazil’s own Green Revolution, this past episode continues to define Embrapa’s identity and Brazil’s agricultural science and technology, reinforcing a view of agricultural development while neglecting alternatives.
Purpose
This article seeks to understand how Embrapa has carved its name in Brazil’s agricultural history, creating a powerful national brand with global recognition. It explores what constitutes Embrapa’s “organizational heritage,” how this has been built within the organization and to what effect.
Approach and methods
To commemorate Embrapa’s 40th anniversary in 2014, an official history (“Memória Embrapa”) was written, focusing on the success of the organization and the reasons for this. This source has been reviewed, then combined with evidence from interviews with 29 Embrapa researchers about the strengths and shortcomings of organizational heritage.
Findings
Embrapa’s story of success focuses on selected technological breakthroughs, highly trained and motivated scientists, and a sense of mission towards Brazilian society. This omits, however, some successes, challenges and alternative approaches to research that do not fit well with the simplified history. Three such omissions stand out: (1) the official history barely mentions the concerns about the environmental and social impacts of the spread of large‐scale farming—which much of Embrapa’s research had served; (2) Embrapa created a national seed bank, to which indigenous groups demanded access since they had conserved much of the genetic material in the bank (policy was changed to allow indigenous groups access and to promote a dialogue between the scientists and the farmers); and (3), in similar vein, some scientists in Embrapa endeavour to engage with local expertise, with ethnoscience, to enrich and broaden the research.
Policy implications
Rooting Embrapa’s brand in history makes the narrative persistent and hard to challenge. This risks creating a simplified, monolithic narrative about Embrapa and Brazilian agriculture that feeds technocratic fixations with high science and transfer of technology as the dominant pathway to agricultural development and food security. This may have been considered necessary in the 1970s, but increasingly the agricultural research agenda must include environmental sustainability and conservation of agricultural biodiversity, climate change, social fairness and a respectful engagement with different ways of researching, including learning from the longstanding practices of farmers.
“…In the 2000s, family farming embodied, through a social class perspective, the counterpoint to an S&T system at the service of dominant agribusiness interests. At present, the contestation of the dominant model is best articulated by the agroecology movement, which albeit relatively confined inside Embrapa has in recent years expanded considerably in Brazil (Levidow et al, 2019; Petersen et al, 2013). Embrapa’s agroecologists, however, still face considerable internal resistance and prejudice, as a researcher at Embrapa Cerrados explained:Embrapa was created during the military regime and the training of many researchers was very conventional, very conservative.…”
Motivation
The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, Embrapa, is well known for incorporating the Cerrado into Brazil’s modern agriculture through its discoveries of how to improve infertile soils and to develop soybean seeds adapted to the tropics. Known as the Tropical Revolution, Brazil’s own Green Revolution, this past episode continues to define Embrapa’s identity and Brazil’s agricultural science and technology, reinforcing a view of agricultural development while neglecting alternatives.
Purpose
This article seeks to understand how Embrapa has carved its name in Brazil’s agricultural history, creating a powerful national brand with global recognition. It explores what constitutes Embrapa’s “organizational heritage,” how this has been built within the organization and to what effect.
Approach and methods
To commemorate Embrapa’s 40th anniversary in 2014, an official history (“Memória Embrapa”) was written, focusing on the success of the organization and the reasons for this. This source has been reviewed, then combined with evidence from interviews with 29 Embrapa researchers about the strengths and shortcomings of organizational heritage.
Findings
Embrapa’s story of success focuses on selected technological breakthroughs, highly trained and motivated scientists, and a sense of mission towards Brazilian society. This omits, however, some successes, challenges and alternative approaches to research that do not fit well with the simplified history. Three such omissions stand out: (1) the official history barely mentions the concerns about the environmental and social impacts of the spread of large‐scale farming—which much of Embrapa’s research had served; (2) Embrapa created a national seed bank, to which indigenous groups demanded access since they had conserved much of the genetic material in the bank (policy was changed to allow indigenous groups access and to promote a dialogue between the scientists and the farmers); and (3), in similar vein, some scientists in Embrapa endeavour to engage with local expertise, with ethnoscience, to enrich and broaden the research.
Policy implications
Rooting Embrapa’s brand in history makes the narrative persistent and hard to challenge. This risks creating a simplified, monolithic narrative about Embrapa and Brazilian agriculture that feeds technocratic fixations with high science and transfer of technology as the dominant pathway to agricultural development and food security. This may have been considered necessary in the 1970s, but increasingly the agricultural research agenda must include environmental sustainability and conservation of agricultural biodiversity, climate change, social fairness and a respectful engagement with different ways of researching, including learning from the longstanding practices of farmers.
“…Moreover, if the transition does not use a participatory approach, there is the risk that these will be conventionalized and co-opted, especially in larger territories [33]. The participatory approach, also, has a key importance in the transition, as agroecology is part of the "science with people" philosophy, and there is the need of collaborative strategies between scientists and farmers for co-creating and exchanging knowledge [31,34,35].…”
Agricultural systems need to be more sustainable. Nowadays, the global food production has a remarkable impact in terms of greenhouse gases production, terrestrial acidification, eutrophication and land consumption. Moreover, one of the effects of unsustainable agriculture is depletion of ecosystem services (ES) on which agricultural systems themselves are dependent. Alternative agricultural systems are possible: the aim of this review was to analyze one of these alternative systems, i.e., strong ecological modernization, to understand relevant topics and current state of the art connected with it. As a result that strong ecological modernization can be considered an ecosystem services-based farming system, we focused on the development of topics related to ecosystem services but also to diversification. The review has been conducted applying a bibliometrics approach to recognize the main papers, authors, organization and countries, as well as trend topics and main themes investigated. The results showed that basic research content involves agrobiodiversity, agroecology and diversified farming systems. At the same time, the review revealed a lack about the social and economic dimensions of sustainability that need to be addressed for promoting a true transition to a strong ecological modernization.
“…The growing attention to agroecology in the international debate on healthy and sustainable food systems (HLPE 2019;FAO 2018) has also increased interest in the Brazilian policymaking experience to support agroecological transitions (Place 2021;Levidow, Sansolo, and Schiavinatto 2021;Lamine 2020). Several studies have already been conducted on the institutionalization of these policies in Brazil (Borsatto, Souza-Esquerdo, and Duval 2022;Guéneau et al 2020;Sabourin et al 2017;Schmitt et al 2017;Caporal and Petersen 2010).…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Later added to PLANAPO, this program became the closest to the idea of a 'policy guided by the principles of agroecology' for several reasons. First, it contained a perspective of territorial development that, at that time, had already become the privileged 'scale' for planning and analyzing agroecological transition processes (Van den Berg, Goris, and Behagel 2021; Levidow, Sansolo, and Schiavinatto 2021;Petersen et al 2020;Lamine, Niederle, and Ollivier 2012). Second, it was flexible enough to support the different actions that agroecology movements identified as critical problems in each territory (Schmitt et al 2020), creating what political scientists call a public policy with a high level of 'discretionary' control for 'street-level bureaucrats.'…”
Brazil is one of the few countries that has implemented policies aimed at supporting agroecological transition processes on a national scale. While its experience has caught the attention of the international community interested in building sustainable and healthy food systems, recent literature points to the dismantling of these policies. This article identifies the variety of dismantling strategies to analyze how they are linked to the modification of the policy paradigm. Results suggest that the formation of a 'clientelist-corporocratic' paradigm legitimized active and visible dismantling strategies, such as the extinction of policy instruments and the delegitimization of agroecology through discursive mechanisms.
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