Brazil demands its own carbon measures

As international pressure increases in favor of agro-industry reduces its emissions, Brazil is starting to question the way carbon is measured around the world. The methods used were developed for temperate climates and do not capture the dynamics of tropical soils, where crops and pastures behave differently.

This divergence, researchers and industry executives say, distorts the climate footprint of domestic production and affects policy, financing and markets — a topic that dominated the “Agribusiness at COP-30” panel at COP-30. Estadão Summit Agrodirected by Stadium and produced by Estadão Blue Studio, on November 27, in São Paulo.

Filipe Teixeira, senior director of sustainability at Syngenta, summed up the contradiction: Brazil achieved a technological revolution in this area – adapting genetics, pesticides and practices to the tropical climate – but continued to be measured by imported metrics. “Measure rice root and measure brachiaria root. The storage capacity is completely different.”

For him, it is urgent to consolidate a theoretical science of tropical carbon that produces revised articles and methods capable of influencing international standards.

One of the most obvious methodological limitations is the depth of soil measurements. Global guidelines call for digging 30 centimeters to assess organic carbon, an appropriate depth in cold climates where organic matter is concentrated in surface layers.

In Brazil, a significant part of the carbon is found in deeper layers, up to one meter. “When I measure only 30 centimeters, I start to lose half of the carbon,” said Eduardo Bastos, CEO of the Instituto Equilíbrio and director of the Brazilian Agroindustry Association (Abag).

Consistent policies

The aim is to replace imported estimates with robust local evidence. “Today the figure that many see, up to 90 kg of CO2 per kilo of meat, refers to animals confined in systems very different from that of Brazil. With national data, this figure goes down to almost 10 kg and, in well-managed integrated systems, it can even become negative,” Bastos explained. For this change to reach global decision-making bodies, it is necessary to publish it in influential journals and promote technical acceptance within the UN and verification bodies, the executive argued.

Agronomist Diogo Fleury Azevedo Costa, Ph.D. in Animal Production, reinforcing that bovine methane must be understood in the context of the biogenic cycle – it is the product of a continuous flow of carbon between plants, soil and animals, not an irrevocable fossil release. “The methane that escapes from livestock comes from the grass they have eaten. It’s part of a cycle,” he said.

Fleury draws attention to the risk of simplistic readings: “In New Zealand, 43% of emissions come from livestock; in the United States, only 4%. This does not make a country a climate villain; it shows economic differences.”

For him, sensible policies combine reduced emissions intensity with increased productivity and recognition of sequestration in pastures and in integrated systems.

But a technique without communication is limited in scope. It is on this point that the executive director of the ILPF Network, Rui Pereira Rosa, emphasized: the country still does not adequately communicate what it is doing well in this area.

For him, the transfer of knowledge, through books, videos, infographics and short documents, is as important as scientific production: “When communication develops, it reaches markets and decision-makers. Bad things exist everywhere; It’s a police matter. What transforms is showing what we do well.