MDA launches action plan that points to agroecology and agroforestry as solutions to the climate crisis

The Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Farming (MDA) launches the Plan for the Acceleration of Solutions (PAS) TERRA – Together for the Expansion of Resilient and Restorative Agroecology and Agroforestry, as part of the Brazilian COP30 Presidency’s Action Agenda.

The PAS TERRA aims to integrate agroecology and agroforestry (AE/AF) as a global solution for climate action. In addition, it will contribute to strengthening food and nutrition security, generating income, and improving access to healthy food.

The Plan emerges in a challenging global scenario: the current agri-food system, based on monocultures and synthetic inputs, is responsible for about one-third of greenhouse gas emissions and for 80% of global biodiversity loss. In this sense, the Plan offers a concrete response to these challenges, placing family farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and traditional communities as leading agents in building a sustainable, inclusive, and climate-positive socio-bioeconomy.

The PAS also includes five “acceleration levers” that together seek to develop the transition to sustainable agroecological and agroforestry practices, unlocking their full potential to restore soil fertility, strengthen biodiversity, and transform degraded landscapes into productive and resilient territories, ensuring food and nutrition security and decent income. They serve as essential facilitators for millions of small and medium-sized producers to adopt AE/AF systems that are environmentally sustainable, economically viable, and socially inclusive. They are:

• Producer Organizations: strengthening cooperatives and associations of family farmers.

• Capacity Building and Co-innovation: technical training and “farmer-to-farmer” exchanges, with regional training centers.

• Blended Financing: channeling financial resources through multi-donor funds to mobilize public and private investments and support AE/AF initiatives led by farmers.

• Bio-inputs and Sustainable Technologies: encouraging the production and use of native seeds, biofertilizers, biopesticides, and machinery adapted to family farming.

• Market Access: expanding sustainable value chains and public procurement, such as school feeding programs.

PAS TERRA will strengthen collaboration between governments, producer organizations, and research institutions to accelerate the agroecological transition and the valuing of standing forests, integrating family farming, agroecology, and productive forests into systems that protect Soil, Territories, and the Planet, all encompassed in the word TERRA.

PAS TERRA is a joint endeavour between the MDA, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the FAO/Forest and Farm Facility (FFF), the Agroecology Coalition, the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (CGIAR), and the NOW Partners Foundation.

Plan for the Acceleration of Solutions (PAS) TERRA.