Sustainable soy protocols for the gran chaco region

With support from the Land Innovation Fund, Solidaridad's project aims to identify and define criteria for sustainable agricultural development in Bolivia and Paraguay.

Photos by Solidaridad.

One of the world's main agricultural commodities, soybeans are gaining ground in the economies of Bolivia and Paraguay, as the crop moves into the Gran Chaco biome. With support from the Land Innovation Fund, Solidaridad's project seeks to identify and define sustainability protocols for soy supply chains in both countries, contributing to transform the agriculture in the region. Their multisector approach will design technological, regulatory, and governance tools for innovation adapted to local needs, through dialogue with similar initiatives in neighboring countries, and in sinergy with the international sustainability agenda.  Entitled "Sustainable Soy in the Paraguayan and Bolivian Gran Chaco", the project complements three initiatives carried out by eight other institutions – also supported by the Land Innovation Fund – with innovative solutions for sustainable, climate-smart, and deforestation and conversion-free agriculture in the Gran Chaco region.

With the support of local institutions – the National Association of Oilseed and Wheat Producers (ANAPO) in Bolivia and the Association of Agricultural Producers for a Sustainable Chaco (APACs) in Paraguay – the Solidaridad project will help groups that dialogue with various sectors identify challenges and establish criteria to develop and implement innovative solutions for several fields, such as public policies, monitoring systems, compliance verification tools, and governance. The 36-month project will focus on the Chaco region of Santa Cruz and its transition into the Chiquitania biome, both in Bolivia, and the Chaco region of Paraguay.

The Gran Chaco is one of the Land Innovation Fund's three priority biomes in South America, alongside the Amazon and the Cerrado. It is Latin America’s second largest forest biome, the largest continuous dry forest in the world, and home to enormous biodiversity and major carbon stocks. Its more than seven million inhabitants are a great source of cultural and social diversity. Growing demand for soy and beef, however, has triggered an uncontrolled expansion of land use in the region, with no criteria for sustainable soy production in the biome. "With the Solidaridad project, we want to bring together different stakeholders throughout the soy supply chain to chart local and transnational challenges, and to come up with standards, protocols, and tools for sustainable production. We want to be catalysts in the region for innovation towards a green, climate-smart economy," explains Carlos E. Quintela, director of the Land Innovation Fund.

While they share the same biome, Bolivia and Paraguay face different challenges in the Gran Chaco. In Bolivia, about 80% of rural producers are small farmers; and from 60% to 80% of them do not have deeds to legalize their holdings. The country’s laws provide no clear rules either to monitor and trace production, or to control land tenure. Meanwhile, corporate and international market pressures have intensified demands for measurement tools and protocols for sustainable production.

In Paraguay, the expansion of soybeans demands models for sustainable production that can be scaled up and accepted by the all the region's stakeholders. Investing in sustainable practices such as crop rotation, crop-livestock-forestry, and the recovery of degraded pastures can all help contain the opening of new crop areas. "Investments in governance and technological solutions are possibilities for sustainable soy farming in both countries," explains Solidaridad's Manager in Argentina and Paraguay, Agustín Mascotena. "Our goal, at the end of the 36-month project, is to deliver new protocols for sustainable soy production in the Chaco, with verification and governance methods adapted to local conditions and validated in a multisectoral way," he adds.

The initiative renews the Land Innovation Fund's partnership with Solidaridad in the Gran Chaco region, underscoring the biome's importance in the Fund's portfolio. In an earlier project, representatives of the public, private, and production sectors in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay gathered for a series of multi-sector events to discuss and design natural-resource planning and management solutions for a deforestation-free soy chain in the region. That initiative, as a starting point for the Fund's work in the biome, provided a survey of stakeholders and a better understanding of regional needs and transnational demands for the soy chain.

The Land Innovation Fund's portfolio in the Gran Chaco:

Currently, the Land Innovation Fund supports four projects by eight institutions in the Gran Chaco, dealing with carbon markets, traceability and monitoring, responsible agricultural production models, and the creation of transnational sustainability protocols for soy. In addition to Solidaridad, the Fund's portfolio for the Gran Chaco includes AACREA, CIARA and the ProYungas Foundation, organizations that work in consortium with other important partners in the region. The ProYungas Foundation, dedicated to conservation and sustainable development, partners with the Argentine No-Till Farmers’ Association and Paraguay's Moisés Bertoni Foundation to support the adoption of best farming practices and carbon sequestration on five pilot farms in the Gran Chaco biome. The Argentine Regional Consortium of Agricultural Experimentation (AACREA) works with the Argentine Soy Supply Chain Association (ACSOJA) to shape sustainable development models together with at least 100 farmers in the country. The Argentine Edible Oil Association (CIARA), in partnership with Peterson-Control Union (PCU) and the Rosario Board of Trade, will implement an integrated platform to monitor and verify all the soy traded in Argentina.

itially funded by Cargill, and managed by Chemonics International, the Land Innovation Fund supports the creation, development, and implementation of innovative solutions for sustainable, climate-intelligent and deforestation and conversion-free farming, in three of South America’s priority biomes: the Cerrado, the Gran Chaco and the Amazon. Since it was founded in January 2021, the Fund has supported 28 projects implemented by 24 partners in the region, covering more than 1.6 million hectares, with 1,300 participating farmers.