Fund to promote innovation for sustainable agriculture presents impact results
In three years, the Land Innovation Fund has delivered solutions on more than 2,000 farms covering 2.5 million hectares in four South American countries.
With 44 projects implemented by 54 partners in three years, from 2021 to 2023, the Land Innovation Fund built a portfolio of 70 innovative solutions – complete or underway – to do sustainable agriculture with more than 1,500 farmers on more than 2,000 farms covering 2.5 million hectares in three of South America's priority biomes – the Cerrado, the Gran Chaco and the Amazon. With investments of US$13.4 million, these solutions support farmers moving towards deforestation-free production, with tools and resources to conserve forests and native vegetation, in compliance with international sustainability protocols. One major result of the projects has been avoiding the conversion of 41,000 hectares of native vegetation in the region's threatened ecosystems.
Over three years, the Land Innovation Fund has supported the development of 70 innovations in a variety of areas – public policy and finance, conservation, production and engagement – 26 of which have already been delivered, to build robust landscapes for innovative, sustainable agriculture. Among the solutions funded, 11 are aimed at designing public policies, protocols and regulations for sustainable agriculture. Institutions such as Agroicone, Climate Policy Initiative, Earth Innovation Institute and Solidaridad Latinoamericana are building a positive agenda for sustainable and deforestation-free soy in a strategic region for global commodity production, uniting public and private players to map out and identify bottlenecks and opportunities for public policies in four South American countries.
"For us, innovation means ideas, technologies, processes, approaches, tools and public policies that, when adopted by many players, gain scale and have impacts at local, sub-national, national and global levels," says Ashley Valle, the Land Innovation Fund’s director. "We conceptualize innovations in dialogue with increasingly urgent environmental and climate agendas. This is why all of our actions, initiatives and projects involve ever greater commitments to carbon neutrality, zero deforestation and biodiversity conservation," she adds.
Three of the portfolio's projects focus on new ecosystems for innovation by building tools, mechanisms or technological solutions: the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program (PSSC), with PwC AgTech Innovation and strategic support from Cargill, CPQD, Embrapa and Embrapii; the innovative solutions laboratory (AibaLAB), with Senai Cimatec and support from AIBA; and the Scouting Brazilian Greentechs program, with Climate Ventures. Those initiatives identified 51 startups with green solutions for entire farms – from fields to standing forests. A unique new support mechanism for the sector is the Startup Finance Facility (SFF), whose short-term grants enable solutions at different stages of innovation, accelerating high-impact business solutions for sustainable farms. A total of 22 startups in the PSSC portfolio received around US$925,000 from the SFF to implement 18 projects.
Multiplier effects from the portfolio's innovative solutions can be measured by the financial return from initiatives funded to date. US$37.3 million have already been raised from different partner institutions since the Fund began operating. Produzindo Certo alone leveraged more than US$36 million in funding for training and green credits for farmers in the Cerrado. For startups, the Startup Finance Facility has leveraged US$480,000 in financial and technical support for the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program.
With their farm-focused, landscape approach, projects joining the Fund's portfolio bring solutions in regenerative agriculture, biodiversity, engagement, research and development, carbon or new technologies – some of them combining multiple thematic areas – with proposals that align farmers' day-to-day challenges with urgent demands on global climate and environmental agendas. In Bolivia, for example, the Innovative Regenerative Practices for Sustainable Agriculture (PRIAS) project, coordinated by the Foundation for the Conservation of the Chiquitano Forest (FCBC) in partnership with the Regional Consortium for Agricultural Experimentation (CREA) and the Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF), has established a soil analysis laboratory with the same LIBS (laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy) technology used by NASA to study the surface of Mars.
Of the more than 2,000 farms on 2.5 million hectares in the Fund's portfolio, 80% – some 2.2 million hectares – have been monitored by innovative remote-sensing and data-collection platforms and/or systems developed by partner projects. These are acoustic (Green Bug), floristic (Bioflore) and land (Busca Terra) monitoring initiatives, implemented by startups or by partner institutions leading consortium projects, such as the monitoring and traceability platform for all the soy produced in the Gran Chaco (VISEC), led by CIARA-CEC with the participation of a number of stakeholders in Argentina’s agricultural chain.
Ten projects in the portfolio are dedicated to measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of the carbon balance, using new technologies or methodologies developed by 16 partner institutions and startups. These initiatives cover 323,000 hectares on 112 farms, spanning a broad range of activities – from biomass analysis in different soil scenarios to a statewide jurisdictional REDD project – with further actions to encourage good agricultural practices and biodiversity monitoring, aimed at mitigating climate-change impacts. One example is the "Good Agricultural Practices and Carbon Balance" initiative by the ProYungas Foundation in partnership with the Moisés Bertoni Foundation in Paraguay and Aapresid in Argentina, whose territorial management model combines production, conservation and ecosystem services, including carbon and biodiversity monitoring, on soy farms in the Gran Chaco biome.
"The figures show transitions underway towards sustainable farming and greater environmental compliance across large tracts of farmland in the landscapes where we work, as well as opportunities for farmers to access carbon credit markets and other ecosystem service payment schemes," says the Fund's director, Ashley Valle.