Technology and Science Should Guide Brazil’s Agriculture, Says Ex-Minister

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Forum of the Future Institute, a group of academics, developers, public and private managers with the aim of debating proposals for the sustainable development of agriculture in the country, gathers this week, in Brasília, at the Seminar on Food and Society.

The institute is chaired by a former minister of Agriculture Alysson Paulinelli, one of the people in charge of the modernization process of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Company (EMBRAPA) in the 1970s. In an interview with Agência Brasil, Paulinelli advocated a broad study of Brazilian biomes to guide current and future use boundaries.

“This effort is in the sense of making Brazil aware of its biomes, its use limits, to clearly define what can and should not be used, which technology guarantees the maintenance of natural resources and, logically, its ecological stability. Science and technology come first”, he says.

The event is free of charge and was held on Wednesday, November 27th, and Thursday, November 28th, at the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), in the federal capital. The presence of ex-ministers is expected, in addition to representatives of EMBRAPA, public universities, and the business sector.

Minister Tereza Cristina (Agriculture) is among the expected attendees for the opening panel. The event’s program includes debates on issues such as agro-food research, the use of pesticides, biological control, water, food waste, biotechnology, among others.

One of the seminar’s highlights is the presentation of the Tropical Biomes pilot project’s results, developed by the Forum for the Future, to examine possibilities and limits to the use of natural resources. The first stage was completed based on research in the cerrado (savannah) and the institute intends to establish partnerships with public and private bodies to extend the research to other Brazilian biomes.

“When we thought of conducting this study, we thought of organizing it in a network, through co-working, bringing scientists, and working on this approach of using a natural resource knowing its limits and, most of all, the technologies that allow us to handle this resource with guaranteed sustainability,” says Paulinelli.

The complete program of the Food and Society Seminar is available on the Forum of the Future website.

Source: Agência Brasil