Spin the globe to find a biocultural diversity hotspot where public policies for agroecology are accelerating, where social movements are powerful actors, where cooperatives drive an agroecology economy, and which is ground zero for global climate deliberations. You know where you are – Brazil!
In February 2024, Agroecology Fund and a small group of donor partners headed to Brazil in the days leading up to Carnaval. We feasted on the diversity (three distinct biomes over the course of two weeks!), grassroots innovation, and an infectious sense of hope even as vast stretches of eucalyptus, cattle pastures, and coffee monocultures reminded us of the dimensions of needed change. Please read on to get a taste of the work of our partners as well as our proposed actions to deepen support for food systems transformation in Brazil.
Key Takeaways from the trip
- Brazil’s powerful civil society networks for climate justice, biodiversity protection, Indigenous land rights and agroecology, are transforming food systems.
- National cooperative networks of farmers, such as COOPCERRADO, are strengthening a solidarity economy.
- Biodiverse, forest-based economies that regenerate instead of deforest, are not only possible, but are thriving and demonstrating that Brazil’s agricultural economy can be sustainable, with viable alternatives to soy beans and cattle.
- The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST from Portuguese Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) is spearheading not only a massive agroecological and agroforestry economy but innovating to finance these endeavors and connect urban consumers with healthy food (while fighting land inequalities, racism, hunger and illiteracy!).
- Creative blending of diverse financing that matches the business cycles of the cooperatives increases business success.
- Agroecology rests on constant experimentation – Brazil’s agroecology schools demonstrate how co-creation can happen. Farmers are generating solutions based on local knowledge of ecosystems and practices, with a helping hand from technical experts and researchers.
- COP 30 in Belem looks to be a watershed moment to link food systems and climate, with grassroots movements coalescing around a Peoples’ COP feeding thousands with agroecologically-grown food.
- Brazil’s agroecology movement, grounded in sophisticated cooperatives, is worthy of our support!
Read on to be transported to the diverse and abundant landscapes of Brazil and to be introduced to many Agroecology Fund grantee partners and the inspiring work they do to create a just, climate-resilient, and sustainable world.
Floating Up the Rio Negro
The immersion into Brazil began along the Rio Negro in Manaus. We took part in a gathering organized by the Agroecology Fund’s dear friend, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, which took 65 donors upriver on a deep dive into Amazonian culture, ecosystems and politics. We were quickly introduced to the vastness of the waterscape, where we found ourselves scratching our heads about how the river could possibly reach the high water mark on trees four meters above the level at which we floated. Two Indigenous communities welcomed us (Mura Tukumã and Comunidade Três Unidos, home of the Kambeba people), narrating their stories of reclaiming language and culture – including ancestral agroecological practices – after having been colonized, displaced and dispersed. Surprisingly, 75% of the Amazon’s population (spread across 9 states) now lives in cities. Manaus, where we spent some days with the Global Alliance, has been expanding since the late 19th century rubber boom, which included the construction of a replica of a European-style opera house. In 1967, it became home to a free trade zone, which attracts migrating workers to search for employment and from where manufactured motorcycles and electronics are exported.
A speaker from the Podaali Fund, the grantmaking arm of the Indigenous Amazonian network, Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB), described how their inclusive and participatory fund supports frontline communities across the Amazon in their defense of territory, biodiversity and culture. The bioeconomy they seed regenerates rather than extracts – an essential alternative to the deforestation trap of Brazilian cattle and soy exports. We learned how a network of Brazilian foundations – Ibirapitanga, Institute for Culture and Society (ICS), and their international ally, Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA), are supporting Brazilian civil society organizations organizing towards a people-centered Climate Conference of Parties (COP 30), to be held in the city of Belém in November 2025. Brazil’s powerful civil society networks for climate justice, biodiversity protection, Indigenous land rights and agroecology aspire to make the Belém deliberations a very different, democratic space than the restricted exclusivity that has characterized the recent COPs in Egypt and the UAE. If logistical hurdles can be overcome – and the barges exporting soy from a deforested Amazon can be redeployed to carry healthy, climate-friendly food – a network of allies may even be able to serve up agroecology-produced food for tens to thousands of COP participants. Imagine a food system that restores rather than degrades the Amazon!
The Mother of South America’s Water – The Cerrado (Savanna)
To the Amazon’s south stretches thousands of kilometers of Cerrado, another critical Brazilian ecosystem with immense biodiversity and hydrological treasures, experiencing levels of deforestation even higher than the Amazon. While the world’s eyes are fixed on stopping the deforestation of the Amazon, the Cerrado continues to be pillaged for cattle, mining, and monocultures.
The Cerrado, Angela Cordeiro, Agroecology Fund Co-Director, said, “is understood as the “mother” or birthplace of many South American major rivers, and inextricably linked to the health of the Amazon forest. They feed one another.“
In Brasilia, the country’s modern capital in the Cerrado’s heartland, we visited the offices of União Nacional das Cooperativas de Agricultura Familiar e Economia Solidária [National Federation of Family Farming and Solidarity Economy Cooperatives] (UNICAFES). UNICAFES is a national network of 462 cooperatives composed of 255,000 farmers from 20 states, united in strengthening a solidarity economy. The farmers are taking back a cooperative model hijacked by corporate farmers who commandeer most of the government subsidies. UNICAFES is focused on local governance, solidarity, women’s leadership, and ethnic diversity. They work with varied supply chains – oils, meat, fruit, flowers – through: 1) school lunch programs, 2) local markets, and 3) federal government food purchase programs. About 70% of the foods they source are grown on farms transitioning to agroecology.
Jen Astone, Agroecology Fund Consultant on Small Business & Entrepreneurship, observed, “the size, depth and commitment of the organization to the solidarity economy and cooperatives is exceptional. UNICAFES works with grants, guarantee funds, and low cost credit. They are able to build a national credit model based on pilot grant funding.”
Immersed in absorbing conversations, we looked up at the clock and hurried to the bus terminal to reach Goiania, about 4 hours south. There, we met with Cooperativa Mista de Agricultores Familiares, Extrativistas, Pescadores, Vazanteiros, Assentados e Guias Turísticos do Cerrado [Cooperative of Family Farmers, Collectors, Fishermen, Riverine, land reform settlers and Tourist Guides of the Cerrado] (COOPCERRADO) and its technical arm Centro de Desenvolvimento Agroecológico do Cerrado [Center for Agroecological Development of the Cerrado] (CEDAC). Donning masks and booties, we toured their processing facility and observed where the baru nut is sorted, roasted, and packaged. Baru is a neglected and nutritious wild-harvested nut quickly gaining markets. Outside the small factory sat 15 brand new still-wrapped micro-tractors soon to be distributed to Indigenous communities to reduce the labor burden of the nut harvest.
The Cerrado represents 36% of Brazil’s land, home to 80 Indigenous groups, 44 Quilombola communities (Afro-Brazilian settlements), and 25 million people. CEDAC describes their work as advancing “agrosociobiodiversity.” COOPCERRADO members work with a mind-boggling 273 species – of which 73 are native forest species – produced across a diversity of communities. COOPCERRADO itself sells 108 products to local, regional, and international markets. Their work contributes evidence that extractive agriculture is not inevitable; Brazil can increase its GDP by supporting a forest-based economy, leaving forests intact and rehabilitating degraded land.
Creative and Inclusive Markets
Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) – a peer-managed process that replaces onerous and exclusive 3rd party certification schemes and is recognized by the Brazilian government – is essential to cooperatives’ success. “Sociobio” is one of the new certification seals launched by Coopcerrado’s women farmers. Agroecology Fund’s grant to COOPCERRADO was partially used to capitalize a guarantee fund. The cooperative has recently received a loan from Brazil’s National Development Bank (BNDS) to further their growth. The Pequi fruit plant (Caryocar brasiliense), a superfood, is quickly becoming an important product line.
“COOPCERRADO is not only focused on profitability, we are focused on paying farmers well and getting food to vulnerable populations.”
Alessandra Silva, CEDAC
As we closed a long day together, Jen Astone appreciated our hosts, “You support a powerful and sustainable forest economy based on seeds, pigments, medicines and other value-added products. It builds on and reinforces the biodiversity of the Cerrado.”
Rewilding with CEDAC and COOPCERRADO
The Canaan Settlement, a few hours drive from COOPCERRADO’s processing facility, grows a mosaic of green banana, manioc, hibiscus, maize and vegetables, where a eucalyptus plantation had stood. For many years, over 700 families camped here, occupying this land to claim rights through a process to force compliance with the Brazilian Agrarian Reform legislation and the Constitution. The post-dictatorship Constitution recognizes those who occupy unproductive land as rightful owners. With the support of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST from Portuguese Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), the government agreed to settle 64 families, each now working 9-hectare plots. “We suffered a lot for a better future for our children and ourselves,” Andrea, from one of the families, told us. “We are survivors.”
Intercropped and mulched, Andrea’s nine hectares included a food forest (part of the MST’s national tree planting program described in the next section) devoted to natural regeneration, a government requirement for all farms. Practicing agroforestry with chickens and pigs, she produces enough in her fields to cover most of what her family needs. She sells surplus to a community-supported agriculture program in nearby Brasilia and markets organic certified sesame and hibiscus through Coopcerrado. With her sales, she has built and furnished an eco-house.
“I feel rich in nature,” Andrea said, noting that snakes, and birds have returned. “Go ahead,” she says to banana-stealing monkeys, “We all need to eat.” Bird droppings have spread local Cerrado tree species across the regenerating landscape. From eucalyptus to diversity in five years! “The forest grows faster with agroecology,” Andrea observed.
100 Million Trees, Cooperatives and the Landless Workers Movement (MST)
Returning from Goiania with CEDAC and COOPCERRADO, we visited the national offices of MST in Brasilia to meet with the MST’s tree planting program and FINAPOP teams. FINAPOP is the MST’s financing mechanism and is an acronym for (Financiamento Popular) Peoples Financing for Healthy Foods. The MST is unapologetically anti-patriarchal, anti-racist and pro-LGBTQ, evident in the number of female leaders in the room (all) and rainbow flags.
In 2020, the MST launched the National Program “Planting Trees, Producing Healthy Food” with a 100 million tree goal by 2030. Since then, 25 million trees have been planted and 15,000 hectares restored.
Tree nurseries and seed collection systems bring biodiversity and income to farmers. Satellite imagery shows evidence of land restoration of lands before and after the land reform settlements, where the tree cultivation occurs. Agroforestry led by youth is their secret sauce.
“We don’t do reforestation, we do biodiversity.” Reforestation in Brazilian Portuguese is too often associated with monoculture tree plantations. “Our program is slower and follows the rhythms of nature,” a member of the community said.
The 100 Million Trees program was launched during the pandemic and combines healthy food production and natural resource restoration to protect soil, water, biodiversity and contribute to a better climate. The program stood out to us for three reasons: 1) a commitment to community-based approaches to agroforestry focused on local species for food and income, 2) an emphasis on going slow in order to go deep and thoughtfully, and 3) an accumulating evidence base that demonstrates impact.
Resources are a challenge; Brazil’s non-Amazonian biomes are too often overlooked in forest ecosystem restoration, just as donors also often overlook social movements like MST as implementers, and instead fund NGOs for narrower reforestation projects.
Crowd-funding Finance for Agroecological Cooperatives – FINAPOP
MST has multiple programs that finance farmers transitioning to agroecology. FINAPOP finances cooperatives in land reform areas in Brazil. It was created in 2021 in response to worsening food security brought on by the pandemic. FINAPOP has loaned $11.5 million USD to 25,000 families. MST has raised $4M in loan guarantees and $2 million for working capital to deal with the fact that commercial interest rates can be as high as 12-13% per month. They helped form 160 cooperatives among settled families in 24 of 26 Brazilian states. Cooperative development has been a key element of MST strategy since its creation. FINAPOP was formed to support them. Through a crowd-funding campaign, thousands of Brazilians are now shareholders in FINAPOP, investing their savings in a citizens’ groundswell for agroecology.
“We address the fact that of a $4 espresso in Chicago, the family that grows the coffee beans earns .05 cents from that cup. But we need direct loans with a minimum of $100,000 with 2% return, grace period of 2 years, repayment in 5 years. Our commitment is to return to investors 100% of capital.” Plans are underway to work with the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDS) to secure loans, guarantees and credit lines.
We drew inspiration from FINAPOP due to its sophisticated approach to providing appropriate capital to cooperatives in the MST network and the ability to underwrite costs of their loan team through their operations. The focus on strengthening MST communities’ ability to collectively organize agroecological production, processing and manage marketing risks was impressive. The creative blending of diverse financing for seed capital, working capital, and infrastructure investments matches the business cycles of the cooperatives and increases business success. The cooperatives – primarily rural – are urban facing as well. MST-operated stores sell agricultural products grown by the cooperatives as well as movement swag. It was inspiring to get a glimpse of a relatively rare phenomenon – an urban middle class supporting and investing in the growth of an agroecology movement.
An Agroecology School – 8000 visitors!
We flew east to Bahia on the southern coast of the Atlantic Rainforest. It was the first point of contact for the Portuguese colonizers and from which they mercilessly stripped the area of all the wood. Centuries later, local biodiversity is only slowly recovering within a landscape dominated by eucalyptus and coffee monocultures.
A central question MST cooperatives face is: How do we rebuild productive food systems with so few native trees still standing? “We used agroecology to answer this question. We managed the soil to reduce its acidity and planted more than 10,000 trees to guarantee food sovereignty and generate income,” said a member of the community.
At the Egidio Brunetto Agroecology School, which is well networked with La Via Campesina’s agroecology schools worldwide, we visited test plots of local varieties of coffee interspersed with native fruit trees. As a research site, the Brunetto school collaborates with universities on research and teaching activities. The land where the school sits had been degraded for decades by a small number of agro companies. The restoration has been slow and steady since the MST forced the government to repurpose the land for social use.
“We are overcoming farmers’ desire to clear the land of native trees by encouraging the idea of intercropping with vegetables, coffee and other edible plants,” shared a school coordinator.
Next to a commercial milking operation, pastures are divided for sustainable cattle grazing. The school is affiliated with the MST’s national 100 Million Tree Campaign. Land reform cooperatives form the foundation of the school, through which producers conduct experiments on crop varieties and management practices.
The school serves a commercial purpose as well, jointly branding products with barcodes, cooperative identity, and an official state stamp signifying family farm production excluded from state taxes. School children learn about agrotoxins and agroecology from a textbook on agroecology. Every local school in this region has visited this center since the Landless Movement settled here. 8,000 people overall, including many government officials. “We don’t say this is the MST school; this is the school of the people,” said a community member.
It’s important to situate the school and its ecological efforts in the context of gaining land for agrarian use for displaced and landless workers, some with and some without a background in food and farming. The MST’s power as a social movement is reflected in the way in which the school is a center of political education and with a target of combating illiteracy using popular education methodology adapted from Cuba. In everything they do, they uplift local capacities, apply peer-to-peer training techniques, and build leadership.
A Giant Pao Tree, Ecotourism & Agroecology
A slender crooked crag – described as a “neck” – climbed high above the cooperative settlement we visited just outside of Itamaraju. The peak pierced a low mist. We were invited by the 51 families living there for a breakfast of coffee and teeming plates of steamed root crops. Besides a few broken window panes, the abandoned plantation house of the previous single owner is still intact and now occupied by a bat colony. The farm had produced cacao until disease ravaged the crop. After a lengthy land struggle, the territory– a vast swath of jungle, rocky clearings, and streams – has passed into the hands of the cooperative.
The community is united by a commitment to live in harmony with nature and derive their livelihoods from agroecology – in this case forest-based – and ecotourism. A treasure hidden deep in the jungle is a first growth Pau Brasil tree (Paubrasilia echinata) the iconic tree from which the country derives its name, over 600 years old. “We want to live from the forest and create a farm hotel for ecotourism,” said a community member. While not yet on Tripadvisor, we committed to share their need with potential investors to help find accessible investment for what appears to be a promising rural enterprise.
Abundant Coffee, Pepper and Sorbet at the Milton Santos Settlement
In an open-air hangar wrapped in a cloth wall billowing in the wind, a cooperative of farmers – part of the MST’s base – shared a “mistica” with us, a cultural ritual of welcome. At our feet was a giant sand drawing. Paths marked with seeds, fruits, branches and nuts, twisted across what was a sort of map and told the story of their persistent advocacy for the land. With 138 families, a million coffee plants and a rich diversity of complementary crops, the area is known for its robust food production. In our opinion, it should also be known for its extraordinary cuisine; the dessert served to us in a school classroom was a creamy sorbet made from native fruits thawing and melting on the tongue.
We toured several affiliated farms. A handful of enterprising families own tractors. A coffee grower spoke to us about his transition to agroecology to lower input costs and avoid the pesticides that made him sick. With wood stakes expensive and a contributor to deforestation, a pepper grower used the gliricidia tree (Gliricidia sepium) to train his climbing pepper vines. His family eats about 50% of their diversified production, although labor shortages make harvests a challenge. He and his neighbors have found accessible territorial markets for their produce, including direct sales to the government’s school feeding program. Under a shade structure protecting an above-ground recirculating water tank, we learned about a tilapia fish farm project financed by the Bahia state government. The team that manages it is trying to figure out how to overcome high feeding costs and disease; they’ve suffered a massive fish die-off. Generally speaking, except for the technical and organizational challenges of the government-initiated fish tank, we noted much agency and entrepreneurship among the farmers operating farm-based businesses.
In fact, we were struck by the way that entire families work and play together, from the teenagers who created the “mistica”, to inter-generational coffee production to the way that the kids joined us for the farm tour. Certainly MST cooperatives suffer from the overall trend of rural to urban outmigration, but here we could witness that rural life held allure for at least some young people.
The Opposite of Technology Transfer – NGO Cooperation with Indigenous Communities
Agroecology rests on constant experimentation – in a process known as co-creation, farmers generate solutions based on local knowledge of ecosystems and practices, with a helping hand from technical experts and researchers. Green Revolution solutions have a different logic and method – hooking farmers on proprietary off-the-shelf agro-inputs. The term “agricultural extension” is often conflated with technology transfer, solutions transferred from the north to the south, from the west to the east. So it was refreshing to meet a technical assistance NGO that subscribes to a popular education technical assistance methodology with farmers at the center. And contracted by the Bahia state government for its services no less! Imagine if extensionists responded to community interests rather than peddled chemicals.
At the offices of Terra Viva, one of the oldest NGOs promoting agroforestry in Brazil, we met Pedro, an elder farmer of the organization and one of its co-founders. The organization, he described, was founded in resistance to agribusinesses expanding across the landscape, specifically the eucalyptus plantations for cellulose harvest. “We are survivors of agribusiness,” he said. He and the team were moved by our willingness to travel so far to learn about their work.
Terra Viva is a farmer-led and run organization (codified in their governance guidelines) with more than 1080 participating families in eight cities. Terra Viva has supported communities—Indigenous (Pataxó people), smallholders and Quilombola communities—to use natural bio-inputs and to sell harvests to local schools, which are required to source a portion of their food from local agroecological producers. The state contract with which they work also requires that they hire at least 30% women – although in their case they were already committed to mixed, representative leadership and overcoming what they called “sexist patriarchy.”
The Terra Viva team took us to two Pataxó communities bordering a large national park. The Park, Monte Pascoal, was created in 1961 and overlaps with Pataxó territory. When the park was declared, it did not take into account that the Indigenous peoples had been there for hundreds of years. So, while once traditional Pataxó territory at one time, layers of rules now restrict the Pataxó’s access to the natural resources on which they depend. Advocacy for land rights is dangerous; a Pataxó female leader had been assassinated two weeks before our visit 172 km north, in another location where the Pataxó people are fighting to defend their territory from land grabs.
The water crisis in the second Pataxó community we visited was acute. Droughts have hit the area hard. The communities’ autonomy is eroded by needing water trucks to supply them, a perverse solution after having their rich territory taken from them.
Under a round ceremonial community meeting space, we were honored to attend a community meeting between Tierra Viva and the Pataxó community.
In ceremonial regalia, a leader shared, “they are killing us with land grabs…but they can’t kill everyone. We want autonomy. We need to start cultivating and protect our water so our community can grow.”
He described how they were expelled in 1944 and returned in 1999 with 64 families. A Pataxó woman shared a powerful testimony and concluded, “We have been here insisting and resisting for more than 500 years, and we will continue to do so.”
Terra Viva staff was seeking to enroll Pataxó food producers in a state program that they manage with state resources. We could feel both the community’s skepticism about the public farm extension program as well as the honest relationship between Terra Viva and the community. “Our biggest challenge,” a community member shared, “is to get recognition for our territory. We eat poisoned food. They want to destroy us.” They described their need for a tractor to the Terra Viva technical staff, “We need help to break the ground. To plant and to eat good fried manioc.”
They then took us to their community-owned and operated manioc mill, which they seek to scale up to increase both food and revenue. Manioc is a staple food in Brazil and cassava flour is critical to the Indigenous peoples’ diet and economy. Next to the grinding mill, community members roasted and dried the flour. Billowing smoke tumbled to the edges of the rustic shelter’s roof and dissipated towards the clouds. Each of us took turns pushing a long wooden rake to spread the manioc over a giant flat skillet suspended over licking flames. They expressed gratitude for our visit and solidarity, “Be ready to shout for us,” a community member entreated before we hugged and climbed into our air-conditioned van.
Future Actions For Ongoing Support and Solidarity
Where do we go from here? Brazil, as mentioned, is at the center of innovation in the bioeconomy – a term now gaining traction in the donor community, although we learned is eyed skeptically by social movements – perceived as a slippery ingredient of greenwashing.
Brazilian social movements offer so many rich and timely opportunities to strengthen truly localized and climate-friendly food systems that protect vital ecosystems and the rights of smallholders and Indigenous Peoples. Our partners were bold; they inquired: Are you able to help us muster the necessary resources to drive this work forward? We feel both inspired and obligated to follow up and want to extend an invitation to you to join us.
Here are some actions we will pursue in the short and medium term
- Continue to provide grant support to leading cooperatives and cooperative federations that strengthen Brazil’s agroecology bioeconomy, with an eye towards funding initiatives across Brazil’s critical biomes and across key constituencies – Indigenous, Afro-descendents and Smallholders.
- Connect cooperatives with impact investors, including philanthropic foundations that make impact investments, to mobilize blended finance for the bioeconomy.
- Continue to support learning exchanges among Brazil’s civil society movements, committed public officials and their counterparts across the globe so that experiences and lessons can be shared.
- Support Brazil’s social movements’ advocacy plans for COP 30 before, during and after the 2025 meeting– in coordination with the broader global agroecology movement.
Celebrate!
We can’t close this note without a few words about Brazil’s world-renowned Carnaval, which was just getting underway as we prepared to leave. What a remarkable – and fun – capstone to our trip. It is a celebration of reckless abandon despite so much that is wrong in the world, despite family worries, despite the pall of climate change and hunger. With samba and sparkling mascara, anything is possible. The agroecology movement in Brazil is exactly this in microcosm – a celebration of an accelerating and hopeful alternative despite scars across landscapes, injustices and long odds.
at Carnaval
Thank you for reading! Questions, comments and suggestions are most welcome at daniel.moss@agroecologyfund.org. Stay tuned for an upcoming webinar with our Brazilian partners.
This report was written by Daniel Moss, Agroecology Fund Co-Director and highlights the perspectives and stories of our partners in Brazil. Thank you to all who contributed their time and shared their perspectives.
Jen Astone, Integrated Capital Investing and Agroecology Fund Consultant on Small Business & Entrepreneurship
Kyra Busch, CS Fund
Angela Cordeiro, Agroecology Fund
Rex Raimond, Transformational Investments in Food Systems (TIFS)