On Tuesday (9), the National Agroecology Association (ANA, in Portuguese) presented to the Lula government a set of proposals aimed at building the National Plan for Agroecology and Organic Production (Planapo, in Portuguese) 2024-2027, an instrument to guide the Brazilian state for the next years. The organization suggests actions regarding climate change, combating hunger, promotion of health and measures that combine all these approaches in a way that advances the common good in the country.
The proposals were presented during the resumption meeting of the National Commission for Agroecology and Organic Production (CNAPO, in Portuguese), a body that involves civil society within the government. It aims to monitor the National Policy for Agroecology and Organic Production (PNAPO, in Portuguese), which was revised by Lula’s administration in 2023, 11 years after its creation. The idea is for ANA's suggestions to be considered by CNAPO. The organization is calling on the Lula government to prioritize the issue from a hunger-fighting perspective.
"We believe that fighting hunger is not just about distributing any kind of food, such as ultra-processed food. Food production needs to be healthy, in addition to having the right quantity and quality. Agroecology aims to produce what we call 'real food' because it's natural food that preserves nature and people's lives, so it's a way of fighting hunger immediately," says social scientist Sarah Luiza Moreira, a member of ANA's Women's Working Group and a Cnapo alternate.
One of the organizations' demands is for the government to designate a budget for agroecology policies for the next four years. "A budget for agroecology means innovating when it comes to designing public policies because often you have policies that nominally have the idea of agroecology, but have a very conventional conception. There's no point in putting an agroecological label on it. In practice, this means [that we want] budgets that strengthen the organizational capacity of movements, networks and organizations in [rural] territories," says agronomist Paulo Petersen, ANA's representative at Cnapo.
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Defenders of agroecology are in a political-ideological dispute with agribusiness, which is generally more focused on large-scale production and long-distance consumer markets. ANA argues that to encourage agroecology, it is necessary to stimulate different initiatives. "It's about strengthening territorial food systems that bring production and consumption closer. It's about building another type of economy, with short marketing circuits and production based on biodiversity. However, they depend on actors in the territories [where food is grown]. So, an agroecology policy is one in which the state works together with society to build more localized and territorial agri-food systems."
In the document presented to CNAPO, ANA lists public policy proposals for Planapo, such as technical assistance for family farming; the dissemination of initiatives such as seed houses, in which creole seeds are produced and stored; prioritizing the demands presented by territories over those put forward by banks and lenders; expansion of policies that strengthen agro-ecosystems and productive cultures according to the reality of each location and biome; effective state supervision of the use of pesticides in the country; urgent resumption of the National Program for Reducing the Use of Pesticides (Pronara, in Portuguese), among many others.
The proposed measures were suggested by the movements, entities, networks and other organizations that make up ANA. They were discussed throughout the second half of last year.
"It was a decentralized debate process with various representatives from civil society involved in the agroecological plan. Throughout Brazil, we listed the proposals that were consensus within the segment. As national policy and CNAPO are being taken up again, we feel we have to contribute to this discussion," says ANA's executive secretary, Flavia Londres.
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Government
The deputy secretary of the National Secretariat for Social Dialogues and Articulation of Public Policies, Marcelo Fragozo, who represented the General Secretariat of the Presidency during the meeting in which the suggestions were presented, told Brasil de Fato that ANA's proposals will be evaluated and later discussed with different instances of Lula's administration.
"We will present these suggestions to the government, bring government bodies to the table to discuss programs, goals, budget targets and priorities. We are making efforts regarding the ‘short blanket’: too many problems for not much resources. Our challenge, then, is precisely to promote this dialogue with civil society, decide what needs to be built first and build strength within the government for the idea that agroecology is not a sectoral issue, but that it can be seen as a structuring issue in our vision for the Brazilian countryside."
Legislative power
The civil struggle to strengthen agroecology policies is in line with initiatives developed in defense of the agenda on other fronts. That's the case with Bill 3904/2023, authored by federal deputy Valmir Assunção (PT-BA), which converts Pnapo into a state policy. The measure was instituted by federal decree during the first Dilma administration (2011-2014) but was later interrupted by the Temer administration (2016-2018). The PL's author claims that the eventual approval of the proposal would favor the financing of the policy, guaranteeing its permanent existence in the state machine.
"Once the decree becomes state policy in a more institutionalized way, it becomes the task of the state, whatever the government is in office, to implement the policy. Once approved, the [public] budget must take into account state policies," he said. The bill's text guarantees actions such as special credit lines for organic production and sustainable extractive activities, and raising funds from international and national sources through loans, donations and other initiatives. The text is currently in the Chamber of Deputies, where it is awaiting a vote in the Agriculture Committee.
Edited by: Vivian Virissimo
