Dear Madam/Sir,
Please find attached Note Verbale n. 021.
Submission from BRAZIL
Although the costs of agrifood systems are constantly (and asymmetrically) emphazided during most of the discussions regarding the sustainability of the process, we do believe it is absolutely crucial to call attention to the distinguished benefits of such complex and essential human activity. For instance, agrifood systems are the main providers of calories and nutrients for human beings’ requirements, generate jobs worldwide and can participate as an important, strategic mechanism to balance Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.
Notwithstanding the fact that the present call announces that it seeks to "discover the true impacts, both positive and negative, of global agrifood systems", their beneficial aspects have not been explored accordingly. As a matter of fact, only unfavorable effects of the activity were portrayed by FAO’s flagship publication “The State of Food and Agriculture 2023” (SOFA 2023) (https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/cc7724en) and even the Call for Submissions (https://assets.fsnforum.fao.org/public/resources/2023-12/EN_TOPIC_SOFA2…). It is important to mention that although the SOFA 2023 edition does state in the introductory note that “Agrifood systems generate significant benefits to society, including the food that nourishes us and jobs and livelihoods for over a billion people”, the entire SOFA document is massively and exclusively focused on negative impacts of agrifood systems.
It is very much in this sense that we have critical concerns regarding the TCS (True Cost Accounting) approach methodology as the backbone of SOFA 2023. Leaving benefits aside (or even if only to be partially considered in second rounds or phases of the exercise) does not guarantee, at all, that transformative actions on agri-food systems can be adequately assessed or evaluated after consideration of hidden costs through TCA.
Moreover, as we could gather from the TCA definitions and meanings of hidden costs and hidden benefits as well as in the Executive Summary of SOFA 2023 (on pages xviii, xx, xxiii, for instance, and also, in other parts of the full SOFA document), these seem far from what would be considered as valid, more strictly correct, or really useful according to the classical literature of Cost-Benefit Analysis - CBA. In the literature of CBA (cf. Dasgupta et al., UNIDO Guidelines for Project Evaluation, for instance), all costs and benefits (visible, invisible, hidden, true, etc) of projects, activities, or programmes, must be considered properly in a sound analysis.
In sound CBA’s, costs are “sacrificed/foregone benefits”. As such, benefits (among which the hidden benefits of the SOFA TCA approach) must be appropriately valued, and cannot be just, or merely, reduced to a “negative” “reflection” of costs (negative hidden costs) as in the proposed TCA approach. Therefore, some of the affirmatives on the usefulness of TCA, such as, for instance, the one contained on page xxiii of the Executive Summary are very questionable – “… A comprehensive assessment of costs and benefits with TCA can also help businesses mobilize financial resources for the transition to sustainability ….”. The exact meaning of the statement remains to be clarified: (i) a comprehensive assessment of costs and benefits with TCA, meaning comprehensively assessing costs and benefits as per the definitions, meanings and methods of TCA? Or (ii) a comprehensive assessment of costs and benefits as contained, for example, in a sound CBA, but also using TCA? If (ii) is the chosen meaning, then a sound CBA seems more recommendable, and may suffice.
Despite these precautious remarks and considering that a second phase for SOFA may be forthcoming with more in-depth assessments targeting specific components or sectors of agri-food systems, we believe that Brazilian agriculture research institutions and other stakeholders would be willing to participate and contribute in this future process.
Having said that, through the document attached, we present a thriving, robust, and ambitious public policy, named ABC (Low-Carbon Agriculture) Plan, applied in Brazil and focused on sustainability and food security to harmonize sustainable development with mitigation and adaptation strategies against climate change throughout the rural production sector. This initiative, which also considers economic, environmental and social aspects, should work as an illustrative, distinctive example of (hidden) benefits of agrifood systems. Indeed, its focus makes the ABC Plan a global benchmark, unique in its scope, breadth and reach.
To explore existing case studies of agrifood systems benefits, the reading of the whole document entitled “ABC Plan: Ten years of success and a new sustainable form of agricultural production” is highly recommended. Both Chapters 3 (“Expanding results in the adoption of ABC technologies and GHG mitigation foreseen in the ABC Plan”) and 5 (“The ABC program as a finance instrument for climate-sustainable agriculture”) summarize and clarify some distinguished cases.
We believe that the ABC Plan is a very good example of transformative actions towards sustainable agrifood systems applied by Brazil and illustrates, quite remarkably, how decision-makers and other stakeholders are implementing the strategy and impacting the benefits of such systems. Hopefully, this initiative will inspire decision-makers elsewhere to adopt similar programmes to foster sustainable agrifood systems worldwide, to guarantee food security and nutrition for a growing global population, providing livelihoods to those along the food supply chain in an environmentally sustainable way (OECD, 2023). Furthermore, irrigation practices, considered within the ABC+ Plan, are also widely discussed as a key strategy for adapting agriculture to climate change to guarantee production as they contribute to avoid crop failures due to water stress caused by extreme weather events. Regarding mitigation, irrigated systems are effective in controlling GHG emissions, as they alter soil microbial activity and substrate supply, as long as the water use in irrigation is optimized, according to a broad review by Sapkota et al. (2020). In addition, studies on organic carbon levels in Brazilian sandy soils show that they can be reestablished to levels observed in native vegetation, after a long period under irrigation, and accumulate an expressive quantity of C per ha per year as compared to rainfed areas (Campos et al., 2020; Dionizio et al., 2020). Maintaining soil moisture increases carbon stock in the soil, as soils rich in organic matter retain more nutrients, increasing yield, while promoting carbon sequestration and storage. Finally, irrigation enables the use of “fertirrigation”, which allows the use of animal waste.
Moreover, agricultural subsidies should be considered as an important aspect of hidden costs as, according to OECD, “Producer Support Estimate” (PSE), the annual monetary value of gross transfers from consumers and taxpayers to agricultural producers, in 2020-22, was USD 234 billion (EUR 208 billion), per year on average, in OECD countries (Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2023).
References
Dasgupta, P., Marglin, S., Sen, A.K. Guidelines for Project Evaluation (New York: UNIDO, 1972).
OECD (2023), Agricultural Policy Monitoring and Evaluation 2023: Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/b14de474-en.
Saptkota, A, Haghverdi, A, Avila, CCE, and Ying, SC. Irrigation and greenhouse gas emissions: a review of field-based studies. Soil Syst. V.4, n.20, Apr. 2020. DOI:10.3390/soilsystems4020020
Campos, R, Pires, GF, and Costa, MH. Soil carbon sequestration in rainfed and irrigated production systems in a new Brazilian agricultural frontier. Agriculture, v. 10, n. 156, May 2020. DOI:10.3390/agriculture10050156
Dionizio, EA, Pimenta, FM, Lima, LB, Costa, MH. Carbon stocks and dynamics of different land uses on the Cerrado agricultural frontier. PLoS ONE v. 15, n. 11, Nov. 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241637.
Kind regards,
Permanent Delegation of Brazil to the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations and related
International Organizations
Permanent Delegation of Brazil to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and related International Organizations