Aapresid’s 2024 congress to highlight four Land Innovation Fund initiatives
Projects with international support in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay are featured at a major event in Buenos Aires
Four projects carried out by ten partners in the Land Innovation Fund's portfolio are to be included in the official program of Aapresid's 2024 Congress, scheduled to take place on August 7, 8 and 9 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. With field projects in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, the initiatives coordinated by Fundación ProYungas (with Aapresid and Fundación Moisés Bertoni), Fundación para la Conservación del Bosque Chiquitano (with CREA Bolivia and Conservation Strategy Fund), CIARA-CEC (with the Rosario Trade Exchange and Peterson Control Union) and the ILPF Network Association engage with a range of agendas such as good agricultural practices and the carbon market, traceability and monitoring, biodiversity and sustainability protocols, all with a focus on the farm and impacts on local territories.
Gathered for the first time at an international congress, leaders of the four projects will be able to present results and shared challenges, as well as to discuss synergies and exchanges among the activities supported by the Fund. With actions in some of the most rapidly advancing areas on today's agricultural frontier, in the Cerrado, Gran Chaco, Amazon and Chiquitania biomes, the initiatives help farmers face major challenges on today's agricultural, environmental and climate agendas.
"We believe in agriculture's transformative potential to reconcile production and conservation for sustainable development. We work constantly with a range of players in the agricultural supply chain, identifying day-to-day challenges in the field and opportunities to build solutions for low-carbon, deforestation-free agriculture with no conversion of native vegetation," says Ashley Valle, director of the Land Innovation Fund, adding that "Our actions in the territory have already avoided 41,000 hectares of deforestation in four South American countries where we work."
On Wednesday, August 7, at 9am, leaders from Argentina's ProYungas Foundation, Bolivia's Foundation for the Conservation of the Chiquitano Forest (FCBC) and Brazil's ILPF Network Association will take part in the panel on "Multifunctional landscapes and sustainable practices". From the outlooks of their respective countries, the three institutions will share with participants common experiences of implementing, measuring and qualifying regenerative and low-carbon agriculture practices, promoting the benefits and scope of sustainability actions for the soil, crops and environment.
Multifunctional landscapes and sustainable practices
"It is essential that soil – a fundamental natural resource for generating life – be restored or recovered as quickly as possible. Regenerative agriculture uses agricultural principles designed to imitate nature in order to establish healthy soils and fertile agroecological systems," in the words of Hermes Justiniano, strategic advisor to the Foundation for the Conservation of the Chiquitano Forest (FCBC). At the Aapresid Congress, he will introduce the project Innovative Regenerative Practices for Sustainable Agriculture (PRIAS), which promotes regenerative and low-carbon agricultural practices on soy and cattle farms in eastern Bolivia, a transition zone between the Chiquitano, Chaco and Amazon ecoregions suffering at the hands of the advancing agricultural frontier.
The ILPF Network Association, through the SustentAgro project, provides training and technology transfer to increase the use of integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems in Central-Western Brazil, a region which has consolidated soy cultivation and where regenerative agriculture can help curb expansion into new areas. At the event, it will present the project's general objectives and major outcomes to date. "SustentAgro has brought a real revolution in terms of higher income and improved agricultural activities, especially for small farmers. We see the transformations in people's lives. Farmers now realize that they can upgrade their production techniques to become more and more sustainable, contributing directly to control over climate change," says Nilo Sander, the program's manager.
Meanwhile, the ProYungas Foundation, with support from Aapresid and the Moisés Bertoni Foundation to implement its "Good agricultural practices and carbon balance" project in Argentina and Paraguay, is promoting a land management approach that integrates production, conservation and ecosystem services on soy farms in the Gran Chaco biome. "In today’s world, with growing demands for sustainability to ensure that commodities have no negative impacts on the environment, the 'Good agricultural practices and carbon balance in the Gran Chaco' project stands out by showing how certain production systems not only avoid negative impacts on the environment, but can also have positive impacts by supporting the conservation of important native vegetation areas in environmentally valuable ecosystems," says Sebastián Malizia, the project's coordinator and executive director of the ProYungas Foundation.
From the field to international markets
On Thursday, August 8, at 11:15 a.m., Gustavo Idigoras, from CIARA-CEC, will introduce the VISEC traceability platform on the panel "Regulations, traceability and certifications in international markets". Coming out of joint efforts by farmers and agricultural associations, processors, exporters, civil society organizations, input and service providers, government and private sector entities, academic organizations and research institutions, this multi-sector platform will do georeferenced monitoring of the origin of the soy produced in Argentina's, from the field to the port of export.
Four pilot shipments of 76,000 tons of soy meal from deforestation-free areas have already been shipped to ports in Spain, Ireland and France, from more than 570 farms in Argentina. The tests have allowed to fine-tune the MRV system of VISEC and prepare for the launch of the traceability and monitoring platform, the first modules of which were scheduled to come online in April 2024. "We want to keep working to expand our sustainability protocol, make adjustments to the platform and have more farmers and georeferenced areas participate in future shipments," says Gustavo Idigoras, president of CIARA-CEC.
On Thursday afternoon, a meeting closed to the public will bring together some of the farmers involved in the "Good Agricultural Practices and Carbon Balance" project, coordinated by the ProYungas Foundation, to highlight their achievements on 42 farms in five different macro-regions, three in Argentina and two in Paraguay, covering a total of 147,000 hectares. The project also monitors carbon levels in the soil of productive areas and the biomass of the conserved area, where camera traps have been installed to monitor biodiversity.
During this workshop, biodiversity monitoring and carbon data findings from the crop and conserved areas will be presented, to help understand the relationship between the two parameters. "The consolidated information will be analyzed and translated into diagnoses, with recommendations for improvements, new opportunities and concrete actions. The data will also be posted on an online platform to be launched at the end of the project, to enhance decision-making in the field," says Sebastian Malizia, who will coordinate the workshop with the farmers.
Integrated portfolio:
In addition to the projects presented at the Aapresid 2024 Congress, two other initiatives led by Argentine institutions in the Land Innovation Fund's portfolio are also active in the region. Coordinated by the Argentine Association of Regional Consortia for Agricultural Experimentation (AACREA), in partnership with ACSOJA, the "Environmental and productive sustainability in the Gran Chaco" project implements sustainable production models that preserve or boost farmers' incomes, reduce crop losses, conserve natural areas on farms, restore degraded soils and environments, and apply environmental indicators, with a focus on soil carbon and biodiversity.
Solidaridad Latinoamericana is implementing the "Sustainable Soy in the Paraguayan and Bolivian Gran Chaco" initiative, to identify and specify criteria and protocols for sustainable soy in the biome and to translate the consensus into tools for technological or regulatory innovations adapted to local needs, in collaboration with similar initiatives in neighboring countries (Argentina) and with the international sustainability agenda (European Union).
"Demands for both high-yield agriculture and environmental conservation can only be reconciled through a web of integrated actions, bringing in many diverse players. This is why our projects span different landscape scales, at local, regional, sub-national and global levels, combining networks and resources to implement them and gain scale," explains Ashley Valle. "Events like the Aapresid Congress,” she goes on, "help disseminate knowledge and foster a landscape of innovation for agricultural sustainability, through direct exchanges with farmers."
Since it was launched in 2021, with a contribution from Cargill and under the management of Chemonics International, the Land Innovation Fund has supported the implementation of 44 projects with 54 partners in the region, delivering solutions for sustainable agriculture on more than 2,100 farms covering 2.5 million hectares. One direct result of the Fund's projects has been preventing deforestation on 41,000 hectares of land in the region.
Aapresid Congress Schedule
Venue: La Rural | Buenos Aires Fair Hall
August 7, Wednesday, at 9 a.m. | Room 4:
Panel on "Multifunctional landscapes and sustainable practices", with the participation of Sebastian Malizia (ProYungas Foundation), Hermes Justiniano (Foundation for the Conservation of the Chiquitano Forest), Nilo Sander (ILPF Network Association)
Javier Beltran (The Nature Conservancy) and Fernando Gárcia Llorente (Numen.bio). Mediation by farmer Juan Carlos Cotella.
August 8, Thursday, at 11.15 a.m. | Room 9:
Panel on "Regulations, traceability and certification schemes on international markets", with Gustavo Idigoras (VISEC), Alejandro O'Donnel (Aapresid), Laura Villegas (RTSR) and Andrés Costamagna (SRA). Mediation by Marcelo Regunaga.
August 8, Thursday, at 4 p.m. | Workshop with farmers (invitation-only event):
Workshop and exchange of knowledge with farmers participating in the "Good agricultural practices and carbon balance" program, coordinated by the ProYungas Foundation, in partnership with Aapresid and the Moisés Bertoni Foundation.