How cattle ranchers in Brazil could help reduce carbon emissions

Date:
March 17, 2022
Source:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Summary:
Providing customized training to Brazilian ranchers can not only
help keep carbon in the ground, but improve their livelihoods and
mitigate climate change, according to new research.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Providing customized training to Brazilian ranchers can not only help
keep carbon in the ground, but improve their livelihoods and mitigate
climate change, according to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder and the Climate Policy Initiative / PUC-Rio.


========================================================================== Published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
the new study analyzes the results of a randomized control trial that
examined whether agricultural extension services can help to restore
cattle pastures in Brazil.

The experiment found that customized assistance, in addition to
educational training, successfully supported ranchers in sustainably
increasing their cattle production and paid for itself in the process.

In addition, the net impact of the program on greenhouse gas emissions
was equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere
by 1.19 million tons -- the same amount as the neighboring country of
Paraguay emits in a given year.

"It's an important piece of the puzzle to reach climate goals," said
Barbara Farinelli, co-author of the study and senior agricultural
economist at The World Bank. "What's behind this success is that farmers
become the transformational agent for climate goals." Brazil is the
world's leading exporter of beef, making it a significant part of the
country's economy and an important livelihood for many rural communities.

But cattle ranching has a climate problem: Livestock supply chains are responsible for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and account
for as much as one third of total emissions in Latin America, totaling
hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year.

Mid-sized ranches, like the ones analyzed in this research, are
responsible for one third of Brazil's cattle production. But unlike the
cattle industry in the United States, which is dominated by feedlots,
almost 90% of Brazilian beef is pasture- or grass-raised.



========================================================================== "What that means is a huge demand for pastureland. And a lot of that in
the last few decades has come at the expense of the Amazon and Cerrado
biomes," said Peter Newton, co-author of the study and associate professor
of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The study comes at a time when Brazil's beef industry is encouraging
farmers to return to the Amazon, based on claims by major figures in
Amazonian agribusiness that intensive cattle ranching will enable more
beef to be produced on less land and therefore reduce deforestation. A
main critique of this argument is that most smaller producers in Brazil
lack the technical and financial resources to invest in practices that
support producing more cattle on less land.

The new study joins a growing body of research demonstrating the
importance of customized assistance in helping farmers adopt sustainable practices and increase productivity, and provides sound scientific
evidence that can inform policy discussions in Brazil and beyond.

"We found that training plus technical assistance had significant impacts
on the rate at which farmers restored pasture, on profits, and on carbon sequestration and emissions," said Newton.

Benefits of one-on-one assistance Since many Brazilian farmers are
not in a financial position to implement new sustainability practices,
Brazil has a nationwide policy that gives credit to ranchers and farmers
to do so. But researchers found that the barrier to making sustainable
changes is not money, but knowledge.



==========================================================================
"In this setting in particular, it's not that the main constraint
for improving the operation of the ranch was money, it was really
information," said Arthur Braganc,a, lead author of the paper and Head
of Policy Evaluation, Sustainable Agriculture and Infrastructure, at
the Climate Policy Initiative / PUC-Rio.

The aim of the ABC Cerrado program, financed by the World Bank through
a grant from the Forest Investment Program (FIP) and implemented by the National Service of Rural Learning (SENAR), is to help farmers get access
to the specific information and skills needed to adopt sustainable changes
in their cattle production. Since its creation in 2012, the program has
trained 7,800 farmers.

For this research project, they set up a robust, randomized controlled
trial and recruited 1,369 producers from across the highlands of central Brazil, known as the Cerrado, many of whom had never received previous trainings on sustainable practices. Some 706 of these ranchers attended
a 56-hour course in one of the four practices promoted by the program,
such as the restoration of pastures, rotational grazing or the use of
no-till agriculture.

311 of those 706 producers also received technical assistance, consisting
of 24 visits (one visit per month over two years) from field technicians
to their property, where they received one-on-one advice. What the
researchers found is that while training alone did not improve any of
the measured outcomes, producers who also received technical assistance
showed statistically significant increases in all measured outcomes.

"The before and after was amazing," said Farinelli, who visited several
ranches during the two-year project. "You could see with your eyes
the pasture with applied- and non-applied technologies." Ranchers who
received one-on-one help also increased their productivity rapidly within
a short period of time. Within just two years, these ranchers increased
their revenues by 39% -- surprising the researchers. In the process
of adopting more sustainable technologies, the researchers documented
that many farmers also changed different aspects of their operations
and adopted better management practices.

"That's the value of working with this type of primary data in which
you go to the field," said Braganc,a. "You learn about the behavior of
actual people." The climate cost of cattle The cost-benefit analysis
of the program was also impressive. Incorporating the cost of carbon,
the program generated a climate benefit of $47.6 million per year, making
the program cost effective even if the benefits only lasted for one year.

It's these climate and environmental benefits, which are 10 times higher
than the economic benefits to the farmer, that stood out to Braganc,a,
an economist.

"If you increase productivity, yes, the ranchers are going to gain
something," Braganc,a said. "But the gains for the rest of the society in
terms of lower emissions, they're really higher." While this specific
program will not continue, similar low-carbon agricultural programs in
Brazil have received funding and will continue to explore the benefits
of tailored assistance to farmers and ranchers.

"There's broad agreement among global food system scientists that we collectively need to dramatically reduce our consumption of beef,"
Newton said.

"But it seems extremely unlikely that beef consumption is going to
end in any near-term future. So, it's also important to be grazing
cattle in ways that have a lower environmental impact. If there are
ways of producing meat and animal products in ways that reduce their
climate impact, then that's also a part of the picture, in addition to
reducing consumption." Additional authors on this publication include:
Avery Cohn, ClimateWorks Foundation; Juliano Assunc,a~o, Climate Policy Initiative / PUC-Rio and Department of Economics, PUC-Rio; Cristiane
Camboim, Mateus Tavares and Janei Resende, SENAR, Edifi'cio Anto^nio
Ernesto de Salvo; Diego de Faveri, FGV EBAPE, Brazilian School of
Business and Public Administration (EBAPE), Getulio Vargas Foundation;
Viviana M.E. Perego, World Bank, Washington, D.C.; Sidney de Medeiros, Ministe'rio da Agricultura, Pecua'ria e Abastecimento (MAPA), Esplanada
dos Ministe'rios; Timothy D. Searchinger, School of Public & International Affairs, Princeton University.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
University_of_Colorado_at_Boulder. Original written by Kelsey
Simpkins. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Arthur Braganc,a, Peter Newton, Avery Cohn, Juliano Assunc,a~o,
Cristiane
Camboim, Diego de Faveri, Barbara Farinelli, Viviana M.E. Perego,
Mateus Tavares, Janei Resende, Sidney de Medeiros, Timothy
D. Searchinger.

Extension services can promote pasture restoration: Evidence from
Brazil's low carbon agriculture plan. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 2022; 119 (12) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2114913119 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220317163620.htm

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