Brazil launches carbon-reduction goals for agriculture

Brazil's agriculture ministry will seek to reduce carbon emissions from the farm sector by 1.1bn tonnes of CO2 under a new climate-oriented agriculture (ABC+) program for 2020-30.

The plan includes forest replanting, low-carbon farming techniques, reform of degraded pastures and acceleration of cattle slaughter to reduce heat-trapping methane gas that the animals emit throughout their life. Brazil has the world's largest commercial herd of 215mn heads.

The carbon-reduction goal is seven times greater than the target of the low-carbon agriculture plan from the previous decade. The program is expected to reach 72.7mn hectares (180mn acres), roughly the area of the UK, the ministry says.

Agriculture accounted for 28pc of Brazil's GHG emissions in 2019, according to local think tank Observatorio do Clima.

ABC+ is the second iteration of a plan implemented for 2010-20, which the ministry said reduced the equivalent of 170mn t of CO2 over an area of 52mn hectares, exceeding its goal by 46pc. The program offers subsidized interest rates to low-carbon projects.

Nearly all of the techniques to be showcased in the ABC+ program have already been widely adopted in Brazil's tropical farming industry for decades. They include no-till, or direct planting that reduces fertilizer, erosion and fuel consumption in grain farming, and enhances carbon fixation in the soil; semi-confinement of grass-fed cattle in the weeks before slaughter with special dietary supplements to reduce the animals methane emissions; the replanting of forests and recovery of degraded pasture for productive use.

The ministry plans to present ABC+ at the UN's COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November.

Brazil has been the target of greater international scrutiny under president Jair Bolsonaro, who has pushed for greater development in the Amazon basin and laxer environmental oversight.

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