Brasilia, Brazil-  Agricultural transformation is not a matter of quick fixes but requires visionary planning and long-term political commitment. This was one of the key messages on the first day of the workshop entitled Transforming Tropical Agriculture: An Assessment of Major Technological, Institutional and Policy Innovations, which got under way on 18 July, at Brasilia, Brazil.

The event began with a full and ambitious program of presentations and discussions that extended well into the evening. It was organized by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) in collaboration with the CGIAR and with the co-sponsorship of the World Bank.

One unusual aspect of the workshop was the active participation of current and former government ministers, including three just on the workshop’s first day – Luís Carlos Guedes Pinto, Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply; Sergio Machado Rezende, Minister of Science and Technology; and João Paulo dos Reis Velloso, former Minister of Planning and current Director of the National Institute of Superior Studies. Their contributions gave a clear signal of the strong political commitment behind research for tropical agricultural development in Brazil.

Velloso outlined key elements of planning that had led to the remarkable development of agriculture in Brazil’s central Cerrados, or savannas, and he called for a new revolution in agribusiness that would keep Brazil in the vanguard of agricultural development. Successful implementation of such plans, noted Guedes, requires a large investment in developing human resources for high-quality research. It also depends, said Rezende, on creative approaches for mobilizing resources for research, such as Brazil’s new “sectoral funds.” All three ministers stressed the value of international collaboration through, for example, Embrapa’s strong relationship with the CGIAR.

For CGIAR scientists the event represented an opportunity to put the workshop’s themes in a global perspective and to underline the powerful contribution of international public goods to agricultural transformation in Brazil and elsewhere. The Embrapa and CGIAR presentations together, said Francisco Reifschneider, director of the CGIAR, “showed a compelling picture of the complementarities and synergies between national and international research.”

For Embrapa scientists, the workshop offered an opportunity to highlight and document important achievements, such as the establishment of globally competitive and sustainable production of soybean and other crops in the Cerrados. But it also allowed them to identify the many challenges that remain, including the restoration of environmentally degraded areas of the Amazon.

Major support for research covering a wide range of challenges in Brazil’s agriculture will be provided under a new initiative called Agrofuturo. On the afternoon prior to the workshop, Embrapa and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) signed a US$60 million contract for this initiative.

While assuming many new challenges in Brazil, Embrapa is strongly committed to sharing its experience, especially in Africa. For this purpose the organization announced recently that it is establishing an office in Accra, Ghana, which will begin work in September of this year. Embrapa’s growing commitment to international outreach represents a new opportunity for collaborative efforts with the CGIAR toward our common goal of agricultural transformation in Africa and other tropical regions.