How is it possible that they didn’t realize?! – 06/17/2023 – Candido Bracher

Good history books about critical times for a nation often provoke this feeling of wonder at the inability of the characters to correctly assess the balance of forces at play and thus choose the path to follow.

The third book of the fascinating trilogy “Escravidão”, by Laurentino Gomes, is exemplary in this sense. The combination of in-depth research and accurate historical analysis clearly establishes the tacit alliance forged between monarchy and slaveholding rural aristocracy in the 19th century. It was this alliance that allowed Brazil to go down in history as the last relevant economy to abolish slavery.

The monarchs’ motives for accepting the bargain are evident, since their power depended on the support of local elites. It is difficult to understand why the slaveholding aristocracy believed that it was possible for the country to remain the only economy based on slave labor on the planet. Especially after the abolition in the USA, wouldn’t it be evident that the model had its days numbered? Nevertheless, the book shows that ranchers resisted “until the last minute all the efforts of the abolitionist movement to end the captivity regime”. How to understand such myopia?

Another excellent historian, Jorge Caldeira, published an article a few days ago under the provocative title: “Capital attraction or fossil fair?” The text starts from the observation of the growing worldwide availability of private capital for investment in projects and nations committed to the quest for neutrality of carbon emissions, to conclude by asking whether Brazil, which will host the COP30, in 2025, by then “will have learned to new language of the world’s economy… or it will host a fossil fair for admirers of the latest oil platforms in a sea of ​​renewable energy”.

It is up to Brazilian society as a whole to act so that the country learns this language and can take advantage of the many opportunities presented by this new economy. In this article, I will specifically focus on the role that I believe agribusiness has in overcoming the challenge.

In April, the European Parliament approved a law that prohibits the importation of products originating from deforested areas from 2021 onwards. The European logic is the same as that applied recently when taxing the carbon content of imports of industrial products: not bringing into their practical boundaries that do not respect their environmental norms.

The reactions of government and agribusiness representatives in relation to the measure followed the same defensive pattern that has historically characterized them, by identifying only the protectionist and anti-competitive motivation of the European legislator. They cite cost increases for exporters, unilaterality of the decision and other objections of a technical-legal nature to announce that they will contest the measure at the WTO (World Trade Organization).

The livestock sector had a similar reaction to the self-regulation measure announced by Febraban (Brazilian Federation of Banks), which prohibits the granting of financing by the banking system to slaughterhouses that do not implement, by December 2025, controls to ensure that they do not acquire cattle raised on land illegally deforested in the Amazon. While not contesting the banks’ initiative, they express displeasure and demand that the restrictions be extended to other sectors.

The sector, through the ruralist caucus in Congress, also acted to empty the functions of the ministries of the Environment and Indigenous Peoples.

I do not dispute the right of sector agents to defend their interests through the institutional paths offered to them in the democratic regime, and none of the examples above, in my view, violates this condition. But that doesn’t stop me from questioning the wisdom of these initiatives.

Measures such as that of the European Parliament and even that of Febraban are clear signs of an inevitable and growing world trend against which any resistance effort will be worse than useless; it will be counterproductive, as it will lead to the loss of markets to wiser competitors.

The best strategy in this case would be a “flight forward”, seeking to characterize Brazil as the most sustainable agribusiness country on the planet. As well as using our institutions of excellence, such as Embrapa, not only to develop low-carbon agricultural technology but to provide subsidies to Itamaraty and other bodies involved in international negotiations that allow them to demonstrate the much superior capacity of removing carbon from our agriculture tropical compared to temperate countries.

To achieve this goal, however, it will no longer be possible for agribusiness representatives to remain silent, or adopt a passive position in the face of Amazon deforestation and initiatives to reduce the effectiveness of our environmental legislation. Sector leaders should be the first and most emphatic to condemn the acts of this minority, acting like someone who takes a rotten orange from their peers’ basket.

I am aware that it is rare and even frowned upon in our culture to publicly denounce and criticize members of our group. Many of us, however, admire the recent posture of President Boric, of Chile, in criticizing the reception and the words of President Lula, a leftist like himself, to President Maduro and about the Venezuelan regime. If we find the behavior worthy of praise, why not adopt it?

As a nation, we bear the terrible stain of slavery, compounded by the fact that we sponsored the continuation of its inhumane practices beyond any other economically relevant nation. This longer period did not even generate a more efficient abolition process, which provided the enslaved with real equality of opportunity with European immigrants. Our economy also suffered from the consequent delay in training qualified labor and discouragement to diversify activities, not to mention the negative image that was projected for the nation.

With perhaps the exception of the issue of human suffering, delaying the adoption of a national policy aimed at carbon neutrality will have economic and reputational consequences even greater than those cited above, not to mention the enormous opportunity missed by a country that has all the conditions to lead the low carbon economic cycle.

In the 19th century, civil leaders such as Luís Gama and Joaquim Nabuco did not have the political strength to carry out abolition. Today, there is no shortage of enlightened leaders in agriculture, aware of the importance of the environmental challenge. It remains to be hoped that our elites demonstrate that they have evolved over the last 150 years.

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