 Good morning everyone. My name is Valentina Morales. I am here as a technical support in the family agriculture team of the regional office of the FAO for Latin America and the Caribbean and today I'll be accompanying you as moderator. You may all be very welcome to this first version of the dialogues of knowledge and practices in family farming. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that we have simultaneous interpretation into Spanish, English, French and Portuguese that you'll find at the bottom part of your screen. The series of dialogues and knowledge and practices in family farming seeks to reflect, to promote a collaborative farming and knowledge between governments, farmers and other stakeholders related to the sector and seeks to bring to the fore the contributions of family agriculture within the framework of a transformational agenda of our agri-food systems. Now, always taking into consideration the global action plans for the 10-year period for family agriculture of the United Nations and the realities for Latin America and the Caribbean established in the Santiago Charter drafted at the end of 2021. This set of dialogues will be held via the regional technical platform for family farming managed by the regional FAO for Latin America and the Caribbean and enjoys the technical support of the unit for the participation in family farming and the agri-food network. Later on you'll be able to find the link to our platform where you will be able to find this set of dialogues and other sets of exchanges that we have conducted and that we will continue to hold. All the versions of the dialogue will be articulated with a new integration and global cooperation that seek to arrive at concrete solutions and experiences that may exist to strengthen family agriculture for this series of dialogues. We hope to consider three aspects. First of all, the contribution of family farming to the environmental and climatic agenda. Secondly, the investment in family farming and the sector to transform plural inclusive transformation. And thirdly, family agriculture and the construction of sustainable markets. For this first edition, we just co-organized with a specialized unit on family farming of Mercosura via its pro-temporary chair of Brazil and its national coordination in the ministry of agrarian and family farming ministry. We will be talking about the potential of agroecology and family farming in order to face up to the challenges posed by a transformational agenda of agri-food systems emphasizing environmental and climatic challenges. For this purpose, we have structured three sessions that we will be working on and we will work with the three issues. The first session is today. As I already mentioned, we will focus on the principles, the fundamental practices of agroecology and its link with climate change and the environmental agenda. And we will also identify challenges, opportunities in order to promote family farming and agroecology as a key strategy in the climate change and environmental agenda. For the second session that will be held on October 12th, we will focus on agroecology and the institutional framework and we will listen to presentations on the progress achieved in terms of public policies by countries in Mercosura and how these interrelate with family farming. For the third session, we will have presentations of experiences from throughout the world that will enable us to reflect upon the potential to promote agroecological transition and family farming. Today, we will have four distinguished panelists. We will have a presentation by Dr. Emma Sulikani, who is the agriculture officer at the EFA offices. After the presentation of the doctor, we will listen to the presentation of Emil Crison, who is the main advisor of the Agroecology Commission. And after that, we'll listen to the experience of Brazil via the presentations that will be delivered by Dr. Vivian DeGorio, who is director of the Innovation Department for Family Production and Ecological Transition from the Ministry of Family Farming and Agroecology belonging to the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Farming. And Marcos Rasinski, who will talk to us on behalf of family farming organizations. Following the presentations of our four distinguished panelists, we will have a 30-minute Q&A session in order to discuss the presentations. So, we invite you to take note of any queries, questions that you may have for our presenters and share them via the Q&A session that you'll also find at the bottom of the screen. In the view of time, I will be letting presenters know when they have one minute left to conclude their presentation. So, we'll begin immediately with a presentation by Dr. Emma Siliperandi. Please, doctor, you have the floor. You have 10 minutes for your presentation, and I'll let you know when you have one minute left. Thank you, Valentina. Thank you, everyone, for your participation. I believe that this debate is extremely important because often we do not take into consideration how agroecology can become a solution for the problems that we are experiencing in terms of climate change throughout the world and that are increasingly severe. I would like to share my screen now, and that's how we will have a somewhat more structured view of this. First of all, I would like to say that the FAO is working with agroecology, who has been working with agroecology for some time now. I formed part of the International Secretariat for the initiative to expand the scale of agroecology that was launched in 2018 here in Rome with other UN organizations. And as from there, we developed a whole series of guidelines, frameworks in order to help countries to promote agroecology within their own policies. We also worked with civil society, with diverse organizations with academia and research sectors. And I begin by showing you the 10 elements of agroecology that were approved by FAO member countries in 2019, and that provide us with a guideline to work with policies in different countries. So why do we say it's important to promote agroecology? Well, there are countless reasons for that. Agroecology enables us to work on issues of food, security and nutrition, biodiverse diets to promote local development and agro, inclusive agri-food systems. It also enables greater resilience in terms of the level of agricultural plots. Resilience also at a territorial level and a significant improvement of the way in which agricultural families, indigenous and traditional families that live, and it also contributes to the reduction of rural poverty. So why then promote agroecology? Well, among other things, because we acknowledge the importance of social groups that today have been marginalized in mainstreamed policies such as family agriculture, indigenous people, women, young people, and agroecology also acknowledges the contribution of the knowledge of these peoples and also acknowledges that it is necessary to support them so that they can gain greater access to productive resources. And that is tremendously important. The connection between agriculture or between agroecology and family farming and indigenous farming is very strong because it is as from there that we obtain knowledge about how to work with nature without degrading it. Here I wanted to highlight some other elements in detail in terms of how we are able to or how agroecology can help everyone to work on climate change by supporting biodiversity and how that also has an impact upon people's nutritional aspects because agroecology provides a way to protect nature, to promote the wealth of biodiversity, to restore land and ecosystems that are degraded today whilst at the same time producing safe, healthy food which is diversified, the diversified agroecology system. We are only talking of environmental protection in general because with agroecology we are also able to protect fauna, water reserves and we are also able to work on general climate change protection on the other hand, agroecology strongly emphasizes the issue of participation of co-creation and of connectivity of working jointly, favouring cooperation among family farmers and other stakeholders, especially groups of women, young people, indigenous peoples and thus making the territory much more dynamic. Now what type of policies can contribute to strengthen agroecology? Well, we are talking or referring to the whole agrifood system. It's impossible to think from policies as from production and also about distribution and consumption in this graph and please excuse me because it's in English, it comes from a work published by the FAO together with colleagues from the bio vision and other organizations and it tries to depict this complexity. Agroecology does not simply imply working on production it does not only imply being concerned with the environment but basically it implies working with communities and with ecosystems in a connected fashion. I also wanted to share with you some very quick examples that are the result the results of the application of an instrument that the FAO provided a few years ago in order to characterize and measure agroecological experiences which is called TAPE. Here we have the results of 3,000 productive plots located in eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa and what we can see is that the units that have higher scores in terms of agroecology, in terms of the, well let's say more agroecological properties are indeed the ones that have greatest diversity of land and they produce food of animal, origin, fruits, vegetables and so on. There is a diversity of diet that helps of course the nutrition of people so the more an agroecological plot is the better the diet. Here we find results that illustrate aspects related to soil health and biodiversity in general terms when it comes to vegetable production, animal production and also the natural vegetation and pollinizers. The more agroecological, the greater the health of the soil and the greater is the biodiversity in these plots of land. These are all results that evidence that agroecology works and that we need to have policies in order to support these practices. Here we find the results that was already published in a paper that reveals how agroecology promotes multiple ecosystem services without undermining production and therefore we don't need to be concerned with the sense that agriculture is not productive, it is productive, but at the same time it promotes the fertility of soils, vegetable production, nutrient cycling and so on and so forth and therefore we have an important body of information here, scientific information and discussions and case studies that show that agroecology truly supports the mitigation work and adaptation to climate change. That is why as FAO we are working on supporting countries in order to develop policies that promote family farming, indigenous farming, traditional farming in order to improve this relationship with the environment through agroecology. Thank you very much. Thank you, Emma. Thank you for sharing with us all the concrete results and the impact of agroecology and also the fact that the benefits for ecosystems don't really affect production which is one of the stigmas but it has, agroecology has and you also talked about different practices and the contribution it has for nutrition together with communities and the ecosystems that and everything is seen holistically. So thank you for your introduction and helping us with the different concepts so that we can go deep on the discussion about agroecology with the next presentation by Emile soon. The main advisor for the Coalition for Agroecology. Emile, you have 10 minutes to present. I'd like to remind you that we have simultaneous interpretation into Spanish, Portuguese and French and English and you can access by selecting the appropriate language after selecting the icon, the global icon. Thank you very much, Valentina. I will be sharing my screen with my presentation. First of all, I'd like to thank the organizers for inviting me to address this meeting and an opportunity to talk also about the Agroecology Coalition. The current food systems are not sustainable and I just want to repeat what most of you are very familiar with that our food systems are responsible for one third of the greenhouse gas productions, the loss of the majority of biodiversity losses, the pollution of soil, air and water, the vulnerability to climate change and also not being able to address the triple burden of malnutrition. We are actually moving backwards with more people being hungry than in 2015. And finally, the question of social inequity that is very much prevalent and the loss of cultural values. All these negative aspects are directly associated with our current food systems based on industrial agriculture. So we need transformational change and since 2016, there's been an impressive number of major reports that are saying basically we cannot fix the problems by just improving our current system. We need transformational change. We need a different paradigm and whether we start from underperforming subsistence agriculture or an industrial agriculture that is not sustainable, we need to move towards diversified agroecological farming. This different paradigm that we call diversified agroecological systems aims to address simultaneously economic, environmental, climate mitigation and adaptation, health, social and cultural objectives. And not one at the expense of the others. The current systems have been focusing essentially on the economic performance at the expense of all the others. Now this paradigm is based on 13 principles of agroecology which are aligned with the 10 elements that Emma presented, the 10 elements of agroecology adopted by FAO and its member countries. These 13 principles address not only the production side of the agroecosystem but the entire food system. And I do not have time to go through each of these but there is a very strong social dimension to these principles and also they form a package. This is not a picking list where you can say I will address this one principle or that principle. We must address all principles at the same time. They are all applicable everywhere at all scales but the actions you take to implement these principles are very location or situation specific. So it's not a silver bullet in the sense of one technology that will solve all the problems. It's a different paradigm and the set of principles are generally applicable but what you do locally is location specific and addresses the specific problems including the social cultural values of the people that are affected. These principles are very useful in designing projects or initiatives that aim to transform food systems in a sustainable way. And as I already mentioned the social dimension is extremely important about building social capital of the people and empowering them. So this different paradigm is not just about a set of agricultural practices. It also is about innovation, taking the best of all innovations but those that are compatible with the 13 principles. Not any innovation but those that are compatible with the principles of agriculture and it's combining modern science with traditional and farmer knowledge. It's also about changing the social relations, empowering farmers, adding value locally, privileging short value chains, linking consumers and producers. It's a holistic integrated approach to reach all these different objectives simultaneously. And of course family farmers will be essential in the implementation of the new paradigm. So agroecology is not just one tool among others that can be used to address the current problems. It is a different toolbox altogether. It's a different paradigm a different design. So as I mentioned whether we start from underproducing or underperforming subsistence agriculture or unsustainable industrial agriculture, we must apply these 13 principles adapted to the local conditions in order to move towards diversified agroecological systems that aim to satisfy all these objectives. There are now examples of agroecology at scale whether it's in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. More and more national policies are also supporting agroecology in Mexico, Brazil, Senegal, Nicaragua, India, France, Denmark, just listing a few but these are increasing I would say very much and we are seeing in the last couple of years a tremendous increase in the realization of the potential of agroecology and the development of supportive policies. Now, as Emma already mentioned also the economic performance of agroecology is now well demonstrated from a productivity point of view the image that agroecology would not be able to feed the world or is less productive is being contradicted. Recent studies for example of large scale deployment of agroecology or natural farming in India has shown an actual increase by 11% of productivity compared to conventional chemical agriculture but what is very important is higher income because of the combination of good productivity with the saving on chemical inputs we are seeing very significant increases in income and what is very important for small family farmers is it increases the resilience and stability of the production system very much. From an environmental and climate point of view it enables to keep carbon in the soil and put carbon in the soil to boost biodiversity restore degraded land and this is very important if we want to avoid further deforestation we must restore the capacity of degraded land to be productive again about one third of the global arable areas are degraded and can be restored through agroecology and of course it contributes to very important improving very important ecosystem services like water and nutrient cycling, pollination, pest and disease management. The nutrition and health outcomes are very much demonstrated it's avoiding the negative health outcome of industrial agriculture through the negative impact of pesticides antibiotics and nitrates it provides for healthy diverse diets and also products that come from agroecological production have increased levels of beneficial nutrients such as omega-3 acids, antioxidants and polyphenols and finally the social outcomes it is building social capital it creates for more and better employment and employment throughout the year and it links consumers with producers and it's taking very much cultural realities into consideration the cultivation of diversity of traditional crops that tend to be eliminated from production systems in industrial agriculture and the integration of traditional knowledge so this transformational change requires not only these changes in production practices but also changes in knowledge generation and transmission changes in social and economic relations and changes in institutional frameworks in order to implement and guided by the 13 principles and ten elements but one can ask why is with all the evidence that is now available why are things not happening faster why do we not see a more rapid transformation and there are we identified eight obstacles that we call lock-ins which are slowing down and sometimes preventing an agricultural transformation and I don't have time to go through each of these but I will just mention two one is how we measure success in the past success has been in agriculture has essentially been measured by productivity tons per hectare and or economic income only we must measure the quality of nutrition the also environmental impact the costs to the environment the cost to health these things have to be measured as an outcome of our system and finally the concentration of power in agro in the agro industry which is influencing policies in maintaining an industrial model in place and this needs to be overcome as well now two words about the agro ecology coalition to conclude this was put together created in 2021 in the margins of the UN food system summit we have today so it's a coalition of the willing bringing together both countries and organizations and today we have 47 countries three regional commissions the European Commission the African Union Commission and the Echo was commissioned in West Africa and 140 organizations and that number is increasing every month and rapidly increasing every month there are five working groups in that are the operational arms of the coalition there's one on policies one on research and innovation one on financing and investment one on communication and one on implementation of agro ecology initiatives on the ground and these are the ways by which collaboration is being fostered in the coalition now to conclude some key messages I want to highlight here is that we need fundamentally different food systems it's not about improving the current systems that will not work we must rethink and consider a different paradigm of diversified agro ecological systems these systems are economically performing that has been well demonstrated particularly in situations of environmental stress they are equitable and just they are empowering food system actors including and main actors as family farmers they allow us to adopt sorry to adapt to climate change to protect the environment and increase biodiversity and change is already happening it's not something that is to be done in the future it is just to be accelerated and amplified scaled out in order to accelerate the transformation the agro ecology coalition is providing an opportunity to accelerate this transformation by fostering collaboration among the countries and among organizations and it's well recognizing the role of family farmers that will be essential for a successful food system transformation so with that I would like to thank you and I hope I have stayed within my time allocated and I would be happy to answer any questions later on thank you. Thank you very much Emil for your presentation for your excellent presentation. Thank you Emil for your excellent presentation you were just on time so we thank you for that it's very interesting to see how over the past few years global reports on the environment and climate change have been incorporating and positioning family agro ecology as a practice as a science as a movement that responds to the agenda and that may contribute to the sustainability of our societies I would also like to highlight something that you mentioned related to how agro ecology highlights and preserves a traditional knowledge and combines that information with the technology and how this adapted to local territories increases or improves productivity but also income resilience and of agricultural systems which is something that you highlighted in your presentation thank you very much for showing us the work of the agro ecology coalition and its invitation to adopt agro ecology as a tool for the systems and perhaps in the chat you could leave a link so that people could gain access to the web page to know more about this work that you're doing so thank you very much Emil for your presentation now we'll move on to know the experience of Brazil we have made a slight change in the agenda so now we have the honour of having our presenter Mr. Casio Trovato who is general coordinator of the innovation department for family production and agro ecology of the secretariat of family farming and agro ecology belonging to the ministry of agrarian reform and family farming we will also be accompanied by Mr. Lucinski who will talk on behalf of the organisations and both have 20 minutes to deliver your presentation I'll let you know when you have approximately two minutes so that you can round up Mr. Lucinski please go ahead please excuse me I was thanking the FAO Valentina and Pedro for this very important dialogue on agro ecology because it's a process to build and to socialize this agro ecology in all its aspects we are not going to talk about details here we already clearly have that knowledge and with the objectives of Emma and Emil we have obtained information in that sense we would certainly like to congratulate them as well we are here talking about Brazil with all the ideas that have been put forward as you know the situation that we face in the development of agrarian reform, agrarian development we are trying to recover some situations in a gap that emerged during previous administrations where the ministry itself was limited and the ministry of agrarian development is once again following the Brazilian policy and the important issue here is agro ecology that is the important issue for this ministry we already have a historical construction primarily based on rural social movements that provide us with a whole series of practices and knowledge and different constructions and public policy that public policy has to accompany I don't know if you can see me or whether you are being able to see the presentation, can you see me or the presentation now we can see the presentation there you are let's see, let's go to the beginning of the presentation well I can talk to you about the perspective of the construction of these new policies the social movement and the construction and also involving the conservation of forested areas that is why we are devoted to the construction of frameworks guidelines and with Marcos who is very enthusiastic with this what we find here is a situation that we are experiencing at present as from the prospect of agrifood systems we have the green revolution that has tried to destroy the knowing how to be and how to live family agriculture this model of green revolution is still in force and has implied a tremendous challenge for us increasingly the work of multinationals have a direct impact upon the practices on that knowledge and I refer to the fact that this is a very strong barrier especially when it comes to seeds and that impact which is so strong is also evidenced in the role of the state as a mediator within the stream that is where money comes up and there is a tremendous impact and and playing the role of the state which is something that we have to perform and not only and that is valid not only for Brazil but for several other realities for us this is a tremendous challenge enabling us to recover these spaces with a strong state we also have commodities and the economy of scale and its improvements high costs of land sometimes leaving the land is easier for life especially for the life of young people this implies rural exodus on the part of young people and thus rural areas age and that is a very negative scenario when it comes to production and to agri and to more sustainable agri food systems making industry generate this food in a sustainable manner next slide please and this is one of the ways to go about doing this that we have discussed this and with this new initiative by the development ministry one of the factors that was fundamental is that agro ecology has changed from being a secretariat to a ministry today we have the family farming and agro ecology secretariat to where all public policies within the realm of production agriculture and livestock policies fall within that umbrella or under the umbrella of that secretariat and that leads us to clearly objectively and quickly rethink the ways and the food systems that we want to promote and have for the future that are decades and so the prospect is very strong in this sense and increasingly we are trying to enter into agreements with rural social movements what is it that we want, do we want commodities or rather do we want the production of food at a vegetable scale or at the level of animal protein move ahead with this another strategic challenge is to establish the human relationship between man and society and man and the environment how ecology is transformed in rural areas in order to establish the fundamental role of agro ecology out in the land often we know that the massification of education and the educational process and especially for rural youth is very distant from nature and from ecology and distances us in our lives from that how can we transform how can we recover how can we recover that knowledge in the society ancestral knowledge and that is a very solid role that we have to play and that we have discussed with the public policies of the agrarian development ministry and at present we are headed in the right direction I would say but still we have still not done enough because we need a low carbon agriculture we want agriculture with carbon fixation and that aspect is extremely important for us and we are entering into a dialogue in that sense is it compensatory yes but we as agriculture secretariat will have to face up get involved with this debate which is a world debate how to reconstruct then this debate on low carbon agriculture so that we can move on to a culture which involves the fixation of carbon and that is actually fundamental for our initiatives next one here we see the issue of malnutrition we have overweight poverty and what does all this generate what does this imply for our society and even for rural society so well this transformation that we have experienced over the past few years in Brazil well a large part of the poverty is focused is concentrated out in rural areas decades and that has existed for decades and these are realities that can be evidenced out to face up to poverty malnutrition and overweight well that as from Brazilian society as a whole family agriculture is important in this process of changing this scenario that has already that already exists out in our rural areas these are the strategies we are thinking about strategies that are related to this how to build agro-food and sustainable system based on the principles of agro-ecology which is key for us either using related agro-ecology with farmers with already practice knowing how to use these systems and also thinking about other farmers and the way in which they produce in order to extend this transition process of agro-ecology these are topics that are key of course now this is not an isolated effort all of this is associated to food safety systems such as the right to nutrition and the right to healthy food this was already mentioned Brazil considers all of these aspects so we should think about mitigation and adaptation policies to adapt to climate change and how we should build these processes always thinking about mitigation rather than the adaptation process we need to think about how we can create these processes or spaces so that agro-ecology has room and the power to face these challenges considering the diversity that exists in Brazil a country that is considered a continental sized country another thing that is important is communication of the production and food habits we know that agro-business have conquered most of most of what I did as a result of force communication communication that gets farmers and also consumers and we've seen these movies and so forth and you've seen these I'm sure and we need to think about how we can rebuild these communication spaces communication is communication needs to be fast today also so these are the strategic aspects in which we're working on in the secretary of agro-agricultural family form we have two areas that I'm going to be talking about I would like to leave some minutes also for Marco so we're working in two palers we have the national police on agro organic agro-ecology and I think that it's worth highlighting something here these of the government that it's here participated only in the first one in the first plan apple the second one that took place between 2016 and 2019 was a period when there was we had the first plan apple and the second was built but we didn't really have the time to execute it and now are working in the construction of the third edition of the national plan of organic agro-ecology and production now this is very important to mention this policy allowed a lot of achievements in the country we need to continue to value the key role that women play in this process to strengthen the strengthening process to understand the importance of agro-ecology which is a multidisciplinary field that allow us to build here we can see the second pillar is related to the healthy food program the purpose of this program the purpose of this program is to extend the agro-ecological transition the way the offer of food of healthy food is really farming their organizations so to think about the agro-ecological transition required for the thousands of farmers in the country farmers that may be in the Amazonia for instance or the different areas different regions the different environments that we have in the field which are quite diverse with different agro-systems what we need to do is to to appreciate to put value on that knowledge that farmers have and also to consider that scientific knowledge to be able to align everything always keeping in mind to favor our farmers now this is not an isolated effort all of this is part of a dialogue of a debate I think that all countries are working on this discussion climate change is something that we all know about but 30 years ago only family farmers could see this if you actually talk to them most of them will tell you that for a long time now the climate is changing but most people didn't realize people in the cities in the regions didn't realize these changes now this is also important so that can have this conversation with our farmers here we can see a clear example and I think that Emma mentioned this it's a clear example of what's happening in Brazil two years ago we were talking about droughts and today we're talking about flooding now it's absurd really what's happening in Brazil and it's something that we see on TV when they see the number of natural disasters affecting different regions in the world what we see here are some practices that we created together with farmers working with the social movement so we're strengthening and training farmers which we think it's key now this mass transition I mentioned a while ago now one of these practices is the direct planting system using using A in the different lots to produce vegetable here we see this practice and this is the type of knowledge that we should teach farmers so that they can start using these practices which are sustainable practices ok so what about the main challenge machinery and appropriate equipment for these type of production system so that farmers along with the technical capability and the social movement in the countryside and along with the academy and the different research groups can implement this work so this is not an isolated effort we really need equipment and machinery that can satisfy this production system as we can see in the screen agroforestry systems is also key increase diversity in order to extend the production system so that farmers are able to in order to extend production and food systems and to deal with carbon issues these are very important aspects and are also part of part of what consumers and producers can get from these type of systems now this is the last slide and I'm going to be talking about feeds this is also key to us so that we can make sure these seeds do not have any transgenic elements so we are facing a lot of challenges so we now understand the main principles of agroecology and now we need to think about how we can face that challenge we are going to we need to face the situation in the field, in the country we need to understand the value provided by foods I'm going to give the floor to Marco, my colleague and continue with the presentation and I'm going to open to any questions that you may have after our presentation Good morning everyone I would like to thank Valentina and Casio, Valentina for facilitating this seminar and also like to say hello to Emma as well and thank them for their presentations they help us clarify significant topics now my presentation will be very brief so that we can have time at the end for a Q&A session because I would like to have the possibility to listen to all the panelists I'm Marco, a family farmer and today I'm part of the Coordination of International Relations of our Confederation of Family Farmers in Brazil it's called Contrafe Brasil so I'm going to be making a presentation from the perspective of organizations and also from the perspective of family farmers so that you can understand how we see how we understand this concept of agroecology I would like to start by saying that family farming it's a crucial aspect for us to start discussing agroecology we would not have an implementation an implementation that can preserve environment and produce healthy meals if we do not understand how this model needs to be built based on a redistribution model including agricultural reform so as to strengthen agrofamily farming the other aspects that we need to understand is that family farming throughout history of our countries even when we didn't have the public policies to really have the incentives from the state that process of resilience and resistance came about naturally if family farming wasn't a way of life most likely we wouldn't exist today as a category or as an association or we wouldn't even have agroecological practices if today we are working in agroecology is because of the resistance and the resilience of family farmers the culture of country people another thing that is important to mention to us as an organization is that sometimes NGOs and academia continue by agroecology as something with a romantic perspective they say it's very nice it's very nice to work on agroecology and that's the way we see it we see it as something that has a romantic component and we treat agroecology as a niche as if it were a market niche as if it were something that cannot be applied to everything so if we want to make progress, if we want to move forward towards agroecology efficiently we need to try it as a policy that should be established for the entire group of family farmers we also need to have a political definition nobody can implement an agroecology process in a specific country or in a specific region in the world if there is no political decision to do it so it is a matter of political definition and we're very clear about that but when we had a government that enabled the civil society government that listens to the civil society and actually has the capacity to create a group of public policies, we had progress even if from the perspective of a budget we were leaving with the troubles of the public the public budget because neither family farming or agroecology was part of the public budget in the Brasilia government not even in the best moments so if we observe and we actually make a comparison of the investment for family farming in comparison to large agricultural businesses for instance and if we see the investment on agroecology in comparison to the dominant model we can see that there is that we always work with the troubles of the public budget and that reflection it's important to make because we need to start thinking about this from the perspective of our governments as well we need to think about the intensity governments want to work on this and the budget that we're going to have available even from the perspective of international organizations, FAO and others we need to be clear on that in terms of being able to work with a set of policies providing us with that possibility and why do I say that well you could say that you're being contradictory you're talking about family agriculture that is resilient resistant and that is capable of self-management and sometimes you say okay if we have investments we will continue to work with agroecology as a niche as a policy for a few, a policy for a few people that produces a specific amount of food in general terms that in general terms in urban centers is consumed by an elite with purchasing power and we want to do away with that agroecology must be produced and must be worked on with the people in the fields, in the regions in the forests pure food, the quality food that is produced must be aimed at the poor, we cannot continue with the logic that agroecology or certified pure organic food is to be sold in street fairs or in markets or on the shelves of supermarkets for a specific elite market and that is how a whole series of challenges arise for other policies we need to have credits in place promotion policies technical assistance in other words the state must be a promoter of public policies so that that production capacity on the part of family farmers may indeed be put into operation everything that Casio has said is of tremendous importance but there is a fundamental aspect here nobody works with agroecology simply in order simply because they feel it's important to preserve the environment, the farmer that works with agroecology as a result of his consciousness as a result of his or her way of life he or she knows it's important to preserve to produce and to preserve water the authentic nature and requires incomes, resources in order to upkeep their families market access is an issue of crucial importance if we wish to make headway in that direction I believe that Brazil has important experiences in this sense the national school meals program that presently is from family farmers has to take an additional step in addition to purchasing products to family farmers it must also by agroecological products the PLA the food program, institutional procurement master also take an additional step in terms of providing an incentive in the sense that in addition to purchasing from family farmers from small cooperatives a step must be taken in terms of purchasing this type of food I also believe it's important to advance in this perspective of taking this debate to the level of education agroecology would indeed have to be a subject in school curricula we need to advance make progress with regards to the new agricultural technicians so that they receive training in that agricultural perspective and we must also hold this debate in society as a whole attaching importance to food security and nutritional security based on healthy production I would say that we have an interesting road ahead that we must venture on in our country but we still face many challenges and I would say that the main challenge is to go beyond our debates and the concept of understanding agroecology as something that is up to public political dispute in our society we must approach society as a whole our nations, our peoples the people that consume urban peoples, urban workers must be able to understand that for them to have quality food food that is much more accessible what is required is that we need to put that production model upside down and that not only involves technological change but it also involves the strengthening of a model based on the production of family farmers I know that we have little time I have been very telegraphic so to speak in my presentation and of course I am quite willing Valentina to participate in other events and work with additional events on this on additional events elements of this massive challenge that we face a last aspect is that President Lula and our governmental work with the perspective of generating an ecological transition plan for the next period we therefore face a major challenge how we as farmers the poor and traditional communities how are we going to be observed within this big plan that the government wishes to establish in terms of agroecology and agroecological transition how we, how family farming will be taken into consideration in these 100 major measures that President Lula must announce for the next period thank you very much thank you Marcos for your presentation and for expressing your willingness to hold this discussion we need to discuss the central role of family farming in this discussion of the transition towards agroecology and for providing us with this political and social reflection and for sharing the message that is an option an environmental, social and economically feasible option so thank you very much for presenting this on behalf of the Brazilian government how the government is promoting a transition towards agroecology how it is seeking to massify this transition in the country's family farming and to mention some of the principles that we have discussing for example the youth that you mentioned the role played by women in this transition thank you very much and now we have a few minutes available in order to entertain some questions that have been placed in the chat so I'll begin with a first round of questions first of all for Brazil I have three questions the first one says given the Brazilian experience what is the relationship between agroecological production and certified organic production and also how you are dealing with the agroecological transition when it comes to conventional producers when it comes to venturing on this process on this transition and finally what resistance are you facing in Brazil in order to advance towards this new model and how you're going about so please Casio and Marcos I would much appreciate if you could answer these questions do you want to begin Marcos Marcos has switched this microphone so I'll answer this very quickly Marcos has put forward very evident and clear issues we have a national policy a national certification policy which is known as the policy for organics for us what is important as family agriculture and when it comes to agroecology is that we have been able to include in our policies the organic certification in Brazil to include the idea of the participating partner and this issue sets as a part very often from what other countries are doing we are of course holding dialogues with other countries in South America and with other countries in general so that we're able to work on an equivalence of this certification process it's important to state that this certification is done by farmers and between farmers so that they are able to be empowered vis-a-vis other production models and that guarantees the reality of agroecology as a space which enables them to identify their production and this transition process is very varied we have the farmer that is very traditional and that do not have a sustainable practice especially in the field of extraction or farmers with less potential and also those that are already within operating within the conventional market whom we often call the little free business in inverted commas and therefore and that is our reality and what centralizes the guidelines which is agrotoxic products this present is one of the problems that opens the door to hold a dialogue with farmers resistance well Marcos has already put this forward very clearly budgetary restrictions if we had a political prisoner we could have made progress if we had political weight we could have made a much stronger headway in the different fields and activities of our family farmers here in Brazil Marcos I don't know if you want to supplement that answer it was necessary well I believe that Casio has been quite precise in what he has said and this has to do with political dispute and political decision making if you don't have a political decision on the part of a specific government or a specific segment it becomes very difficult to expand on that why because the prevailing has already been organized in general terms via the major corporations and the major companies we find the resale of agrotoxic products and they provide technical assistance and they accompany those farmers and sell that type of technological package on our part we lack that same power provided via that technical assistance or by our organizations to be present in those plots and to take part in that debate and thus to work around the idea of having a model that is more sustainable and that is why I say that this is related with the definition of priorities it has to do with public policies it has to do with the public budget and I believe that we have already made much progress in fact there is a question in the chat that refers to institutional purchasing or institutional procurement when we talk about the public budget that we had during the government of Lula and Dilma at that time public procurement was not sufficient so to speak in order to acquire the whole production and therefore what is of great importance is to continue to work in order to expand technical assistance resources technical monitoring resources to promote agriculture and livestock and because that is another issue credit agricultural credit in Brazil is designed within the banking system and is designed in order to obtain a credit per product in a credit or loan per commodity in many cases and that is why we still Casio have to face up to a challenge which is to to dwell on existing public policies thinking about how to satisfy the expectations of that agro-ecological transition model that is the main problem that we are going to face in the next period a challenge not only faced by government but by society as a whole I would like to ask Emma and Neil I would like to ask them three questions that I am going to try and group some of the questions from the chat so how do you see agro-ecology and organic production and how are you working to promote this product at a consumer level how are you working on the production of organic agro-ecological products and how you can support countries so that this type of so that we have authorities high level authorities participating in this type of events so those two questions so Emma maybe you can go first I think that as for organic production and agro-ecology production there are always a lot of discussion but I think that it is possible to connect those fields both fields so that they are not contradictory because if you work in the same direction to transform the agro-food system in a more sustainable way and more in a way that is more friendly with the environment so agro-ecology is a little bit broader but it promotes social changes that are more transformative than organic agriculture so it gets to a certain point but after that it doesn't move forward but there are a lot of aspects in common for instance, organic agriculture also needs public policies and it also needs public policies to improve the markets to support it to get more funding to get more technical assistance so there are a lot of elements that can be worked together but I think that it is important to have this vision mentioned by Cassio and Marco and Emil mentioned this as well which is that agro-ecology wants to get to a global transformation and this global transformation implies healthy food available for everyone and not just for a niche market which is normally the case of organic agriculture they focus on a small market or markets where they can sell the products at an excess price so the agro-ecology says that everyone is right to healthy food access to production that can satisfy our needs without affecting negatively the environment now as for the policies and the role of international organizations I think that it is very important for the United Nations for instance to be clear that agro-ecology can contribute to this transformation it could be the FAO the FADA the Biodiversity Convention I mean in general the different climate related funds for instance etc. so all of those organizations need to be clear that agro-ecology is a solution so just as the national levels need to put more money more technical capabilities and focus on more research the international organizations need to do the same they also need to include this in their communications in their letters in their reports it's important for them to affirm that agro-ecology is a solution to this transformation because this is going to be considered by the countries when creating their own local policies so it's important to have international consensus around these topics and we're working on that and the coalition it's actually an important instance to convince the international sphere but also for the countries individually we are working to convince them that this is urgent possible unnecessary thank you Emma Emile thank you I want to compliment what Emma is saying and maybe going a little bit back in history in 100 years ago at the very origin of organic farming the concept was very much with the 13 principles and the 10 elements of agro-ecology what has changed is that with the development of regulations that are creating the framework for the guarantee system on what is allowed and what is not allowed has brought an evolution of organic farming with the focus essentially on input substitution on replacing chemical inputs by organic or authorized inputs and this has led sometimes to what I would call something that is incompatible with agro-ecology because it is focusing only on the input substitution and it forgets about all the other dimensions I can give one example of greenhouse produced cucumbers or tomatoes in huge gigantic greenhouses of 3000 hectares where very poorly paid laborers often migrants are being exploited in this monoculture of cucumbers or tomatoes this is organically certified but it is very incompatible with the principles of agro-ecology and it is not sustainable so organic production can be very much aligned with agro-ecology in the spirit it had at the origin and the way that many small family farmers are still practicing organic farming, organic production but because something is certified organic does not automatically mean that it is sustainable and that it is compatible with agro-ecology principles this we have to move beyond just input substitution and compiles the entire implementation of all the 10 elements of agro-ecology and the 13 principles so that is this discussion about the relationship between organic and agro-ecology has to be understood in this way that it can be perfectly compatible and be the same but not necessarily depending on what actually is done in the organic production thank you and if I can just take the floor here to invite organizations and countries that are not yet member of the agro-ecology coalition to join the coalition to join this effort now to strengthen the and accelerate the transformation the more countries and the more organizations that are present the more efficient we will be in getting the recognition of an agro-ecological transformation in international debates and international policies so I invite countries and organizations that are not yet member of the coalition to join it and you can find information on our website thank you thank you for your answers and your comments I would like to thank you for your incredible presentations for the discussion I think that we have a more broader understanding of the role of family farming and agro-ecology in the environmental and climate change agenda but also the economic and social agenda of our region I would also like to thank Dr. Vivian Grigorio the director of the innovation department for family production of the family farming of the ministry of agricultural development of Brazil and I would also Dr. Vivian I don't know whether you would like to say a few closing remarks before we close this session Hello everyone I'm Vivian and my mission is to lead this important discussion about agro-ecology it's key for family farming today particularly if we think about the context we are living today this is a process that it's been carried out in Brazil and Latin America we need to think about production and leadership we have certain concerns about the reduction of food production which is something that we need to be capable to tackle even though we've had progress already when we have the first organic production policy as part of the national policies actually we have different ministries that are working on this process now that still there are challenges we need to solve when we think about the production of healthy food and if we think about quantity and quality we need a technology matrix to foster biodiversity and also we need to think about sustainable systems now this is a strategic pillar for our government and it's one of the goals to ensure to ensure these to our society so that they can have access to food in order to reduce poverty this is the path to reduce poverty increase the access to good and healthy food and enough food and I would like to apologize for being late actually last night the minister asked me to substitute him in a meeting to discuss a very sensitive topic so I had to be there so I apologize for being late today but I know that Casio Travato was here and he is the general coordinator for our department so we had a good representative so I'm here at your disposal I think that we need to continue to make progress and all of this is key for us to focus on the technical support and political support that agriculture needs in Brazil and Latin America and the world in general thank you for your work and for joining this session for closing remarks so we are going to close today's recording of the presentations and the discussions are going to be published in the website for a family farming and in October the 12th we are going to have a discussion session of this series of conversations and we are going to be talking about agroecology and institutions and we are going to have presentations about public policies and how these public policies focus on family farming so I would like to invite you to register to participate in the next webinar so that we can continue having conversations on this topic about family farming and I hope that you have a very nice afternoon thank you very much for joining us and again we apologize for the delay at the beginning have a nice day