Paula and Valter on the mission to break the monoculture paradigm

Agribusiness is always praised as the great engine of the Brazilian trade balance. Its environmental impacts, however, motivate entrepreneurs to engage in promoting alternative models for work in the field.

The couple Paula Costa and Valter Ziantoni believe that the agroforestry system (SAF) can resolve sector dilemmas, such as climate change and the use of chemical inputs that degrade the soil. With this in mind, they founded PRETATERRA in 2016.

Based in Timburi (a municipality in São Paulo, 360 kilometers from the capital, near the border with Paraná), the company plans and implements agroforestry systems, trains farmers and offers online and in-person courses.

"We want to ensure that all production systems in Brazil, and perhaps in the world, are agroforestry, that is, they have some arboreal component. And this is absolutely possible and necessary. That is what we are working towards"

Paula Costa

Inserting trees into the production system brings environmental benefits. The challenge is to make these systems also economically viable at scale — with a fair price, inclusive work and a final product free of pesticides and that promotes life.

Each project foresees aspects such as harvest volume and financial return to the farmer. The idea is that agroforests can be tools not only for environmental sustainability, but also for economic and social sustainability.

But after all, what are agroforests?

Agroforests are systems created by humans that add trees (perennial plants) to productive arrangements, whether pastoral or agricultural.

Agroforestry systems mimic how nature behaves, both in the arrangement of trees and plants in space and in their strata or floors — and thus create richer, more biodiverse and also productive landscapes.

Unlike monoculture, in which the focus is on the production of a single item, agroforestry works with polyculture: from a single production unit it is possible to extract a wide variety of products.

Trees, for example, are a source of wood products (such as sawn wood, firewood, charcoal and cellulose) and non-wood products: fruits, nuts, fodder, latex, fibers, oils, resins...

This diversity of species also transforms the countryside into a place rich in environmental and ecosystem services, such as soil protection, water conservation, microclimate maintenance, pollinator attraction and carbon fixation.

BEFORE STARTING A BUSINESS, THE COUPLE WORKED AT FAZENDA DA TOCA, IN SP

Forestry engineers, Paula and Valter have been working in agroforestry for a decade. For two years, for example, they headed the Research and Development area at Toca Farm, a project by Pedro Paulo Diniz in Itirapina, in the interior of São Paulo.

Known mainly for the production of organic eggs sold in the capital's supermarkets, Fazenda da Toca also maintains an agroforestry systems operation.

"We worked very closely with the field and research teams and helped to redesign all agroforests for a large scale. We were able to prototype a lot of things, understand mistakes and successes, do financial modeling, test, put the test in the field..."

— VALTER TELLS ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE AT THE PROPERTY:

It was from this experience and accumulated technical knowledge, says Valter, that they coined the concept of large-scale agroforestry.

The idea was to take the logic of monoculture to polyculture and, thus, allow agroforests to gain scale and not just be restricted (as has been the case in the last 70 years, according to them) to backyards and subsistence plantations.

Putting this approach into practice required a new methodology. “We created a method of planning the production system in a modular, replicable and elastic way so that the farmer can see it as a business”, says Paula.

PLANNING ALLOWS YOU TO MAKE PROJECTS FEASIBLE ON ANY SCALE

With a project in hand, Pretaterra plans modules for one hectare (area equivalent to 10,000 m²) that can be replicated in areas of both half a hectare and 1 million hectares.

"With this planning, the project becomes viable on any scale. And when we talk about a large scale, it is not necessarily in large estates, but with several farmers spreading it across the landscape. Each replicates that design in various contexts, on various properties — and ends up occupying a large area"

— PAULA COSTA

For projects to be “elastic”, the partner couple uses the concept of “functional niches”, grouping species by function (and not by type).

This allows the arrangement to be made according to the region and the species available at the time of implementation.

A project designed for Rio Grande do Sul, for example, can be transposed to the Amazon by exchanging the araucaria for kapok without changing the design, just the species within that niche.

PRETATERRA’S PROJECTS AND GROWING DEMAND

Valter and Paula say that they started Pretaterra without investment: with the money from the first project, they developed the second and so on.

To date, they have implemented around 100 systems, from Minas Gerais to the Amazon, including countries such as Peru, India and Indonesia. Farmers, NGOs and government institutions are among the customers. No matter how much technical knowledge they have, there is almost always something new to learn from local communities.

“When we arrive in a new context, we immerse ourselves in the local context: we talk to farmers, we observe, we collect data in the field, we learn from them to systematize the important information we need for our planning”

At this moment, they are finalizing the planning to implement a system in Costa Rica with vanilla, cocoa, palm oil, as well as other wood and fruit species. “It’s a very complex system,” says Paula. “We hadn’t worked with vanilla yet.”

According to the partners, demand grew with Covid-19, driven even by the so-called “neo-rurals”, people who left the city, acquired a piece of land and now want to learn how to produce in an environmentally responsible way.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO IMPLEMENT AN AGROFORESTRY PROJECT?

It is difficult to set a value, but, on average, planning and implementing an agroforestry costs between 20 and 25 thousand reais per hectare.

There are ways to reduce the cost, such as using joint planting efforts or producing your own inputs. This type of action is viable in some contexts with which Pretaterra also works.

"With the support of indigenous communities, we have already managed to implement an entire hectare for less than 3 thousand reais. This was possible because the indigenous people produced the seedlings and the compost itself — and the labor used came from the community, which drastically reduced the cost"

The truth is that the value of the project can be very variable: it depends on the complexity of the system, the species chosen, the spacing that will be used, among other factors.

In an area of ​​4 m², for example, 1,200 seedlings are used if the spacing between them is 2×2, 10 thousand if it is 1×1 and 100 if it is 10×10.

Another factor is the cost of each species. A eucalyptus seedling costs around R$0.60. A macadamia seedling can cost up to 30 reais.

CAN AGROFORESTRY ONE DAY REPLACE AGRIBUSINESS FOREVER?

The big question is: if agroforests are so good, why does it seem so difficult for them to become the predominant form of production?

The answer is complex, ranging from technological and market bottlenecks to the political situation. Today, within agriculture, there is a lot of innovation. For Paula, however, almost everything is designed according to the logic of monoculture or forests. "Technological innovations need to be brought into the polyculture approach. This is one of the points that can take agroforestry to another level. Furthermore, it is necessary to build more complex production chains, connecting with industry, logistics and retail"

By encouraging farmers and ranchers to specialize in a single product, monoculture narrowed markets. It is therefore necessary to diversify them. To move this agenda forward, Pretaterra emphasizes the importance of producing content, educating people about agroforestry systems and products.

Our work is to build a new paradigm based on agroforestry systems", says Paula. "And what would this new paradigm be? Simple: we don't need monocultural systems. We can produce abundantly in polyculture.

Original Article: https://www.projetodraft.com/um-casal-com-uma-missao-quebrar-o-paradigma-da-monocultura-e-tornar-o-agronegocio-mais-saudavel-para-o-planeta/

Source: Projeto Draft