Public-private agreement boosts efforts to integrate crops, livestock and forests in the Cerrado and the Amazon
The ILPF Network Association and the Department of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Seapa) of the state of Goiás signed a Technical Cooperation Agreement to benefit the SustentAgro project, in partnership with the Land Innovation Fund.
Photos by Fabiano Bastos
A technical cooperation agreement between the ILPF Network Association and the Goiás State Department of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Seapa) marks the beginning of activities for Sustentagro, a program to innovate and encourage the adoption of integrated crop-livestock-forest systems in the soy supply chain of the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul and Goiás. The program is led by the ILPF Network, with support from the Land Innovation Fund, and the partnership signed on July 27 is the first of three public-private agreements signed with governments in Brazil's Center-West region to help engage farmers and expand the area under integrated crop-livestock-forestry (ILPF in portuguese) systems. Sustentagro's objective is to contain the expansion of agricultural frontiers in the region as well as the environmental impacts of grain production.
Selected in the third round of funding for Land Innovation Fund projects, SustentAgro will monitor environmental compliance by more than 30 farms on an area of more than 60,000 hectares. Of this total, 30,000 will also be part of processes to certify and validate sustainability criteria. The project's novelty is its unified approach to the assessment and validation of integrated crop-livestock-forestry (ILPF) systems, using several methodologies in a single platform, to enable efficient monitoring and precise quantification of soil carbon.
For the ILPF Network Association, public-private cooperation agreements such as the one signed with the State of Goiás enable the training of rural extension agents and facilitate diagnoses for the adoption of technology and to identify farmers' bottlenecks and needs in each region. "Our goal is to make our efforts ongoing or at least long-lasting, so we're always looking for partners who can be with us during our activities and ensure their continuity even after the project ends. Public-private partnerships play a very important role in this regard," says Nilo Sander, project coordinator of the ILPF Network Association and coordinator of SustentAgro. "We are already negotiating with the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul to expand the reach and duration of our projects, so they can help us choose the project's priority municipalities and support us during training activities," he adds.
The ILPF Network Association will soon issue a call for proposals to select eighteen farms in priority municipalities, to be defined in the three states of the Central-West region, which will become technology dissemination units for the benefits of integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems. The selected farms will receive technical training and technology transfer for low-carbon, digital agriculture.
"We are already negotiating with the states of Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul to expand the reach and duration of our projects, so they can help us choose the project's priority municipalities and support us during training activities" , says Nilo Sander, coordinator of SustentAgro.
"The public-private cooperation and multi-stakeholder relationships that guide the ILPF Network Association's efforts are consistent with building an innovation landscape for sustainable, deforestation-free agriculture in South America," says Ashley Valle, director of the Land Innovation Fund. "We are delighted to have this institution's knowledge and expertise in our project portfolio, contributing to greater adoption of integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems in such a strategic region for Brazil's agribusiness as the Center-West", she adds.
More information will be posted soon on the ILPF Network Association and Land Innovation Fund social networks.