International Fund Announces Development Projects in South America
The seven projects chosen by the Land Innovation Fund focus on areas of the Cerrado, Gran Chaco, and Amazon biomes in three countries of the region.
Seven projects were selected in the second call for funding by the Land Innovation Fund for South America. With investments of around US$4 million, they all address major challenges on today's sustainability agenda, with novel solutions including forest offset programs, sustainable monitoring and management of farms, best agricultural practices, carbon sequestration and funding schemes to pay for environmental services. Reaching an estimated 400 farms, the solutions will boost the diversity and reach of the Land Innovation Fund's project portfolio for a sustainable soy supply chain, deforestation-free with no conversion of native vegetation in three of the region's priority biomes: Cerrado, Gran Chaco, and Amazon.
The seven initiatives will be carried out by thirteen partners in three countries – Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. In Brazil, the selected partners are: the Climate Policy Initiative, an organization with experience analyzing public policies and finance, whose project leverages forest replacement under Brazil's Forest Code legislation; the International Institute for Sustainability, a think tank that will use behavioral sciences to chart factors influencing farmers' decisions on land use, and design behavior-based mechanisms for soy growers to conserve native vegetation and adopt sustainable agricultural practices; Produzindo Certo, a socio-environmental diagnosis and compliance platform that will expand its database to 500,000 hectares of land, democratizing farmers' access to technical assistance on sustainability and to green business opportunities; and the Treevia, a technology company that measures and monitors forest data in partnership with GSS Carbon and Bioinnovation, with a solution to pay for environmental services provided by farms in the Cerrado biome.
"The growing demand for food, coupled with the increasing impacts of climate change, demands immediate solutions in favor of sustainable agriculture, with no conversion of forests or loss of native vegetation. Our new project portfolio reaffirms our commitment to innovation and transformation in the soy supply chain, focusing on farms and farmers, and expands our presence and operations in the Land Innovation Fund’s priority South American biomes: Cerrado, Gran Chaco, and Amazonia," says the director of the Land Innovation Fund, Carlos E. Quintela. "The four projects to be carried out in Brazil cover areas of the Cerrado, and two of them – Climate Policy Initiative and Produzindo Certo – also involve farmers in the Amazon," he adds.
In Argentina and Paraguay, the three selected initiatives will all be carried out by a consortium of several institutions. The ProYungas Foundation, dedicated to conservation and sustainable development, in partnership with the Argentine Association of No-till Farmers (AAPRESID) and the Moisés Bertoni Foundation of Paraguay, will support the adoption of best agricultural practices and carbon sequestration on five pilot farms in the Gran Chaco biome. The Argentine Association of Regional Agricultural Experimentation Consortia (AACREA), has joined with the Argentine Association of the Soy Supply Chain (ACSOJA) to create sustainable development models with at least 100 farmers in the country. And the Argentine Chamber of Vegetable Oil Industries (CIARA), in partnership with Peterson-Control Union (PCU) and the Rosario Board of Trade, will set up an integrated platform to monitor and inspect all soybeans marketed in Argentina.
"The growing demand for food, coupled with the increasing impacts of climate change, demands immediate solutions in favor of sustainable agriculture, with no conversion of forests or loss of native vegetation. Our new project portfolio reaffirms our commitment to innovation and transformation in the soy supply chain, focusing on farms and farmers, and expands our presence and operations in the Land Innovation Fund’s priority South American biomes: Cerrado, Gran Chaco, and Amazonia," says the director of the Land Innovation Fund, Carlos E. Quintela.
The new portfolio of projects expands the Land Innovation Fund's work in the Gran Chaco, a biome covering approximately 850,000 km2 in Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina that since the 1990s, and especially in more recent years, has recorded one of the world's highest rates of deforestation caused by increasing pressures to convert natural ecosystems into farmland, especially for soybeans. "The Gran Chaco is home to a wide variety of animal and plant species, in a territory occupied by many diverse and culturally significant native peoples. However, the region is also one of Latin America's most environmentally vulnerable areas. The projects selected for this biome are invigorating dialogues among many different players on the sustainability agenda seeking synergistic solutions for sustainable agricultural development, climate change mitigation, and appreciation of the region's standing forests," says Quintela.
Launched in October 2021, the Land Innovation Fund's Second Round of project funding received 47 applications, in four priority programmatic areas – policy and regulatory instruments, methods and tools, participation and diversity, and solution delivery – all focused on innovative and sustainable solutions for rural landowners. The seven selected projects reaffirm the Land Innovation Fund's commitment to solutions that develop, test, and deliver innovative scientific, technological, and business solutions to achieve a sustainable soy supply chain free of deforestation and conversion of native vegetation in South America, as well as partnerships with leading players pursuing the same goals.
In a little over a year, the Land Innovation Fund has supported thirteen projects, with nine partners and thirty participating startups. It has engaged more than 60 farmers and 70 institutions in two major South American biomes, Cerrado and Gran Chaco; conducted the selection process for two rounds of projects; and structured the selection dynamics of a third call for new initiatives and partnerships, soon to be announced. "From innovation to transformation, we unite efforts and investments in a network of multiple stakeholders to help build a portfolio of projects and initiatives with impacts for society as a whole," says Carlos E. Quintela.
READ ABOUT THE NEW PROJECTS:
In Brazil:
FOREST COMPENSATION PROGRAM: Leveraging the financial replacement instrument in the Brazilian Forest Code to promote sustainable development is the Climate Policy Initiative's proposition, to enhance transparency, data access, and information integration for better decision making and stronger ecosystem mechanisms in the country. The project will use in-depth research, structured dialogues, and broad dissemination to ensure the regulation and implementation of forest replacement in all of Brazil's soy producing states, especially in the Cerrado and Amazon biomes. The goal is to pave the way for opening ecological corridors and protecting priority conservation areas.
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES APPLIED TO A SUSTAINABLE SOY CHAIN: Focusing on the Cerrado biome, the International Institute for Sustainability's project aims to apply behavioral sciences in innovative ways by exploring the use of behavioral economics to design incentives and policy interventions for the voluntary conservation and restoration of native vegetation and the adoption of sustainable practices. The IIS will also test how behavioral interventions can enhance farmers' willingness to accept such incentives, and contribute to implementing private, public, and multilateral policies conducive to responsible agriculture.
PRODUZINDO CERTO PLATFORM: This digital green-business hub will develop new features to enhance user experiences on its Produzindo Certo platform. It will train 60 multipliers to add value to services provided to farmers; add at least 500,000 hectares of land to the platform's database, with detailed socioenvironmental diagnoses and action plans to correct any non-conformities; offer farmers access to the "I produce right" (Eu Produzo Certo) application with new, green business opportunities; add three new commercial contracts to the catalog of companies served by the Platform, with up to R$50 million in green credit lines to finance sustainable soy production in Brazil, creating technical and financial conditions for responsible farming practices.
PAYMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES IN THE CERRADO: Focusing on Cerrado areas in the state of Tocantins, Treevia's project, in partnership with GSS Carbon and Bioinnovation, aims to facilitate farmers' access to a variety of technological tools and financial instruments to enable payment for environmental services, generating additional revenue to encourage the conservation of native areas, thus avoiding deforestation and the conversion of new areas in the soy chain. The initiative will be carried out on two fronts: development of a software and hardware tool for monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) methodologies, based on Treevia's own SmartForest tool; and the design of technical, legal, and financial instruments for farmers to earn additional income to keep the forest standing, by selling environmental assets on an innovative platform.
In Argentina and Paraguay:
ENVIRONMENTAL AND PRODUCTIVE SUSTAINABILITY IN THE CHACO: This project by the Argentine Association of Regional Agricultural Experimentation Consortia (AACREA) aims to create innovative and sustainable agricultural production models for the Gran Chaco region, in partnership with the Argentine Soy Supply Chain Association (ACSOJA). The initiative, with at least 100 farmers working on about 250,000 hectares of the biome in Argentina, aims to establish and validate agricultural ecological intensification models to maintain or increase farmer incomes, reduce crop losses, conserve natural areas within farms, restore degraded soils and environments, and apply environmental indicators, especially soil carbon and biodiversity.
VISEC MONITORING PLATFORM IN THE GRAND CHACO: This proposal by the Argentine Vegetable Oil Industry Chamber (CIARA), in partnership with Peterson-Control Union (PCU) and the Rosario Board of Trade, will establish an innovative traceability and monitoring platform to assess environmental, social, and economic impacts of soy and other commodities grown in priority areas of Argentina, starting with the Gran Chaco. The VISEC platform is a single system to monitor and verify Argentina’s entire soy production, consolidating all the sustainability parameters and requirements relevant to the marketing of soybeans. The initiative entails the contributions and participation of many different stakeholders, from growers to exporters and NGOs, and aims to generate transparent, reliable, and publicly accessible data, to help grow and market essential goods in an environmentally sustainable way, especially soy and its by-products.
BEST AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES AND CARBON SEQUESTRATION: The ProYungas Foundation, in partnership with the Argentine Association of No-till Farmers (AAPRESID) and the Moisés Bertoni Foundation, will support the adoption of best agricultural practices and stimulate the conservation and restoration of native vegetation on soy farms in the Gran Chaco biome, to help mitigate climate change and enhance the value of standing forests. The project will be carried out on five pilot soy farms in Argentina and Paraguay, covering at least 50,000 hectares. It will quantify the carbon emissions of the production activity; evaluate the carbon stock of the native vegetation; classify the farms by category (whether carbon emitters, carbon neutral, or carbon sinks); develop an internationally accredited carbon offset project for the native vegetation area; and develop an online information platform to ensure project transparency.