<article><p class="lead">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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>Agriculture accounted for 28pc of Brazil's GHG emissions in 2019, according to local think tank Observatorio do Clima.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>The ministry plans to present ABC+ at the UN's COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November.</p><p>Brazil has been the <a href="https://direct.argusmedia.com/newsandanalysis/article/2259866?keywords=brazil%20emissions">target of greater international scrutiny</a> under president Jair Bolsonaro, who has pushed for greater development in the Amazon basin and laxer environmental oversight.</p></article>