International partnership seeks solutions to conserve the Cerrado
With 15 startups now in its portfolio, the 4th cycle of the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program seeks new initiatives to generate value and conserve native vegetation on farms in this biome.
Applications are being accepted for the 4th cycle of the "Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program (PSSC) - fostering entrepreneurship and innovation for deforestation-free farming". This edition will prioritize proposals that generate value for the conservation of native vegetation on rural landholdings in the Cerrado region. The fifteen startups in the portfolio today, selected in the first three cycles, all offer solutions that help mitigate some of the biggest challenges on the sustainability agenda of our time. The program is the result of a partnership between the Land Innovation Fund and AgTech Garage, with strategic support from EMBRAPII – Brazilian Company for Industrial Research and Innovation – and has initial funding of about R$2.2 million to support startups.
To expand its scope of innovations and the program's reach, the 4th cycle of the PSSC encourages the participation of startups with regulatory and financial solutions for sustainable production, such as financial mechanisms, traceability, and environmental compliance; the reduction of deforestation and degradation of native forests, through monitoring, maintenance of water resources, and regenerative agriculture; and the generation of revenue from the conservation of native vegetation, such as carbon markets, the bio-economy, and payment for environmental services. "We want the new initiatives to complement the projects supported in the first three cycles, to compose a portfolio of sustainability solutions able to address rural landholdings as a whole - from croplands to standing forests," says Carlos E. Quintela, director of the Land Innovation Fund.
As a biome covering 22% of Brazil's land area, the Cerrado lost 8,351 km2 of native vegetation from August 2020 to July 2021, equivalent to five and a half times the size of the city of São Paulo, according to data from the National Space Research Institute (INPE). That 7.9% increase over the same period the year before was the most for the biome since 2015. According to Carlos Quintela, "More than ever, we must care for the land to reap better economic and socio-environmental outcomes, as we expand the understanding that innovation can be an ally of agriculture in the quest for synergies between yields and sustainability."
The program:
Startups selected for the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program participate in an Experience Day, where they have access to strategic and technical mentoring, connect with executives from the AgTech Garage community, exchange experiences with entrepreneurs, participate in events and workshops with professionals from the private sector, and sit down with a team of experts made up of members of partner companies to develop and scale up solutions that will promote the Land Innovation Fund's goals of sustainability in the soy supply chain. PSSC participants also participate in master classes and get technical-scientific support from a team of researchers selected for the Cerrado Fellowship Program: "By intersecting two programs, the AgTech Garage offers all its own expertise and its potential connections with the innovation ecosystem to entrepreneurs and researchers interested in working in synergy and pursuing sustainable agricultural development", says José Tomé, AgTech Garage's co-founder and CEO.
At the end of the cycle, after analysis by an advisory board, outstanding startups may receive financial support from the Startup Finance Facility to further develop their solutions. With funds from the Land Innovation Fund, expertise from the AgTech Garage, and support from the Center for Research and Development in Telecommunications (CPQD), this unique initiative to manage and promote innovation solutions has R$2.2 million available to develop solutions, with the possibility of increasing revenue upon the entry of new partners interested in supporting such an innovation ecosystem for sustainable agribusiness.
Responsible for connecting startups and entrepreneurs to research centers whose state-of-the-art infrastructure and technical expertise will develop the selected projects, EMBRAPII will also be able to co-finance technological solutions, based on its own criteria, with grants. "Innovation and sustainability are strategic agendas for Brazilian agribusiness, which can count on the support of EMBRAPII units to overcome technological challenges. The interaction of large companies with the cutting-edge knowledge of startups can also create a new level of innovation in the field," says Igor Nazareth, director of planning and institutional relations at EMBRAPII.
Through the fifteen startups in its portfolio today, the PSSC offers solutions ranging from environmental monitoring to soil treatment, including ecological restoration, traceability, and carbon quantification. Read more here about the selected initiatives:
THE PSSC PORTFOLIO TODAY:
Adapta: a systemic solution capable of monitoring, planning, and financing farmers who use regenerative agricultural practices in the soy supply chain.
AgTrace: a traceability and quality management company for agricultural products that uses blockchain technology to connect all the links in the production chain and ensure transparency and accuracy of information in the field.
Soil samples in western Bahia.
Agrorobótica: an artificial intelligence platform that uses photonic technology to perform chemical analyses of soil samples using high-energy pulsed laser technology – the same one used by NASA to probe the soil on the planet Mars.
Brain Agriculture: a data automation company with tools that assist agribusiness players to meet ESG commitments and landowners to identify environmental problems.
BrCarbon Serviços Ambientais: created to foster forest conservation and ecological restoration actions, with funding from the carbon market to promote climate solutions.
Busca Terra: a solution to identify environmental services (PES) payment opportunities for farmers, with mechanisms to remunerate or reward conservation and restoration actions on rural landholdings.
Connect Farm: a data intelligence platform to monitor rural landholdings, setting goals to recover degraded or low-yield areas with sustainable solutions that reduce the cost of land use, the risk of fires and erosion.
Forestmatic: using the "Reforestation-as-a-Service (RaaS)" concept, this startup enables reforestation projects that generate income while fighting climate change.
Green Bug: a startup that identifies the sounds of the forest, classifies the results, and issues alerts about possible invasions and deforestation, in addition to collecting data about the fauna.
Maneje Bem: an application for integrated data collection and analysis that connects farms with the business sector and helps make sustainable farming decisions.
Plantem: this high-throughput monitoring system generates data to help quantify and assess the value of environmental conservation.
Quiron: an artificial-intelligence startup that combines data from satellites and nanosatellites to monitor fire risks, pests, and diseases in field crops, map the soil, and count and analyze the vigor of trees.
Safe Trace: a traceability startup that uses blockchain technology to track food from fields to supermarket shelves.
SciCrop: a startup specializing in analytics and data integration, with on-demand algorithm generation, custom dashboards, data integration and management, knowledge transfer and team training.
One and a Half Degrees: integrated intelligence to fight fires in forests and croplands, offering environmental indicators to measure emission reductions through the decrease of lost areas.