The lack of experience and technical content in the management of native species almost made farmer Antônio Maurício da Silva Batista, a resident of Itupiranga, in southeastern Pará, lose everything he cultivated on the small property where he lives with his family. “I really wanted to grow cocoa. I managed to plant about a thousand trees, but as I had no knowledge, no one to encourage me, and no one to explain exactly how to treat cocoa either, I ended up losing a large part of the plantation. Of the thousand trees, there were about 40 left. I didn't know how to plant and manage it to get good fruit. The area was burnt in a disorderly way and, if the cocoa plantation burns, it doesn't recover,” says the 52-year-old farmer.
In 2020, he and other producers in the city were visited by technicians from Embrapa Amazônia Oriental, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, for a proposal that, until then, was new to Antônio: to recover forest areas modified by human action, by using Amazonian flora native species and organizing the species into sustainable and diversified plantations. It was the start of a project called Inovaflora, which had been created for the region, based on the productive forest restoration and which recovers modified areas with a focus on production.
“Inovaflora was an initiative supported by the Fundo Amazônia [Amazon Fund]. We reinforced forest restoration through this public call Since the 1970s, Embrapa has been experimenting with fast-growing species that can be used as alternatives for accelerated reproduction. Due to the degradation and the boom in concern for the Amazon biome, we recovered the modified areas, diversifying and improving this production that serves industries and other segments. We take two or three different species to conceive a production system that can serve small family farmers in traditional communities in the biome,” says project leader Michelliny Pinheiro de Matos Bentes, a researcher at Embrapa Oriental.
Michelliny Bentes explains that the choice of the southeastern region of Pará to implement Inovaflora was motivated by the large number of agrarian settlements, with a long history of soil degradation and large-scale burning. The team's concern was to avoid small producers wanting to mirror the cultivation pattern of the big ones. For this reason, one of the rules for joining the project was the commitment not to deforest for three years.
QUALIFICATION
The farmers also received qualification for environmental legislation and sustainable planting techniques, in order to recover areas that had not been properly managed. Of the 14 families enrolled, however, only half followed Embrapa's guidelines strictly until 2022, when the project was discontinued. Nevertheless, with funding approved by CNPQ, the expectation is to invest in research and attract new investors and more farmers.
“We'll be able to monitor the activities. From there, the research will collect the technical information that will validate and reference these systems. Thus, we will try to learn forms and models that are viable for use with the family farming public, which is less privileged in terms of funding,” says Michelliny Bentes.
Multifunctional forests
A study by the University of São Paulo (USP) published in the journal Sustainability Science indicates that forest restoration can provide benefits for the environment and the economy. According to Pedro Krainovic, first author of the study and a postdoctoral fellowship holder supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fapesp) at USP's Institute for Advanced Studies, this is one of the most concrete alternatives to face anthropogenic climate change, i.e. that was caused by human action. But for this to happen, it is necessary to think of strategies to boost economic, social and environmental development in a sustainable way.
“Forest restoration is still seen by many people as an uncompetitive land use activity. In my research, we aim to improve the relationship between cost, effectiveness and attractiveness of forest restoration. This way, we reinforce the possibilities of integrating this agenda with the bioeconomy agenda and thus increasing the probability of compliance with global pro-climate agreements, with an emphasis on increasing the scale of forest restoration”, explains Krainovic.
BIOECONOMY
For the researcher, among the biggest challenges to encouraging the integration of forest restoration with the bioeconomy agenda, using the potential of multifunctional forests, are: the neglect of local communities, which increases the probability of environmental crimes such as biopiracy; the lack of public policies that support forest restoration and the bioeconomy, to prevent traditional peoples and the forest itself from being exploited inappropriately; and the lack of financial investment that encourages the use of native tree species, which set back the restoration of multifunctional forests on a large scale.
Sustainability to turn the pages of history
While today the eyes of the world are on the conscious use of nature, in the not-so-distant past the same forest was seen as a barrier to be literally cut down. The motto of the Brazilian government during the military regime (1964-1985) - “Integrate not to deliver” - helped not only to keep the Amazon under national control, but also to foster the installation of large occupation and economic development projects in the heart of the forest. According to history teacher Bárbara Palha, this concern with filling the forest void has persisted since colonization, but the impetus for Brazil's economic growth during the dictatorship was the driving force behind the disorderly occupation and unrestrained use of fauna and flora resources.
“Under the military government, there was a big - if not the biggest - federal intervention in the Amazon up to that point, using the rhetoric of territorial occupation, demographic emptiness, hence the incentive for major mineral exploration projects, construction of hydroelectric dams, projects to colonize the Transamazon, expansion of the road network - to integrate the region by land. There was a huge tax incentive for agricultural, energy and mineral and metallurgical projects, not only to increase profits, but also to reduce the activities that were characteristic of the region, such as extractive and subsistence activities, considered to be activities that led to underdevelopment, backwardness and that were an obstacle to economic development,” elaborates Bárbara Palha.
“We need to invest in reformulating consciousness”
Gregório Duarte, a PhD student in Political Science at the Federal University of São Carlos (Ufscar), highlights that the economic logic of occupying the Amazon has transformed the forest into a field to be violently cleared, due to the relationship established between man and nature in the production system. It is necessary to invest in education so that this link can be reformulated, preserving the rights of all the lives that inhabit the forest.
“We need to invest in reformulating environmental and ecological awareness. This means saying that nature is not exclusively a source of extraction, profit and human appropriation. On the contrary: there is a consensus that the way in which this relationship between man and nature is designed can no longer be perpetuated, for a specific reason: nature can no longer support this type of development. It is a widely known fact that the natural resources found on planet Earth can no longer handle the way capitalism relates to nature,” argues Bentes.
APPEAL
This is what happened to farmer Antônio Batista, who had to rebuild his life after losing his cocoa plantation. He also saw the source of the river that flowed through his property dry up completely, because, according to him, deforestation and planting grass would guarantee a greater financial return. However, after diversifying his plantation, respecting nature's time and space, and seeing the spring “gushing with water”, he is proud to see the soil diversified and sprouting again. And he appeals to those in power to ensure that change comes from above as well: “Let's take care of our planet. Let's take care of our Brazil, which is very rich in forest”.
INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERSHIP
The production of Liberal Amazon is one of the initiatives of the Technical Cooperation Agreement between the Liberal Group and the Federal University of Pará. The articles involving research from UFPA are revised by professionals from the academy. The translation of the content is also provided by the agreement, through the research project ET-Multi: Translation Studies: multifaces and multisemiotics.
