In the countryside of São Paulo, the partnership between beekeepers and citrus growers is profitable for both the production and the environment. Thanks to integrated production, the groves continue to bloom, while the beehives continue to grow and produce even more honey in the reserve areas. At the other end, more effective green alternatives for grove management emerge. More than generating income and employment, citriculture has been helping in the sustainable development of Brazilian agribusiness, check out in the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkWiwJ825kA&feature=youtu.be

To support this statement, Mr. Assunção points to some of the results of the study, which show that Brazil has the greatest extension of forest cover with approximately 490 million hectares. This means that the country has around 59% of forest cover in its territory, equivalent to almost double the other countries. The land with agricultural production occupies only 34% of its territory. In France, on the other hand, forest cover occupies 31% of its territory, and agricultural activities occupy around 52% of the country area.

This optimization of land use can be observed in the Brazilian citriculture, which in recent years has adopted a series of technologies and management targeted at increasing its productivity per hectare. The main technique is the densification in groves, which consists in increasing the number of plants in the same area. To get an idea, according to data from the Orange Production Forecast (PES), developed by Fundecitrus, in the 1980s an average of 360 trees per hectare was planted in the citrus belt of São Paulo and Triângulo Mineiro. By 2015, this number more than doubled to 656 trees per hectare. In 2016, the number has already reached 719 trees per hectare. Which means, the increase of production happens with no need to expand the planted area. “A strict environmental legislation combined with technologies that increase productivity and reduce the demand for land, as well as sustainability policies in the field, are factors that contribute to this improvement. And this, obviously, counts in favor of the country’s image when it comes to exporting agribusiness goods“, says the president of Apex-Brasil, Ambassador Roberto Jaguaribe.

It’s the case of the National Clean Field Day, which reinforces the importance of inspection and awareness on the legality and quality of the inputs used by farmers. In the last event, held in Taubaté, around 330 tons of obsolete pesticides that were left on properties and in commerce were incinerated, without knowing exactly what destination they would have.

Another partnership between the agencies is the one that is developing the new system to monitor the flow of marketed products, mapping the path of the input purchased from the acquisition by the distributor to the purchase by the final consumer. “We want it to be a powerful tool to fight informality and piracy, and to be a way to value all the work that the distribution sector does,” said the Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Arnaldo Jardim.

More information about the 8^th ANDAV Congress at www.congressoandav.com.br

More than 420 tons of obsolete agrochemicals stored on rural properties in São Paulo will be incinerated by the Secretariat for Agriculture and Supply of the State of São Paulo. The action is part of the partnership between the Government of the State of São Paulo and the National Institute for Processing Empty Containers (InpEV, in Portuguese), a nonprofit organization that represents more than 100 companies and nine representative entities of the industry, distributors and farmers, which acts as the intelligence center of the Campo Limpo System in the activities of disposal of post-consumption agrochemical containers and promotes awareness and environmental education initiatives on the subject.

This partnership establishes that the Secretariat for Agriculture, through its Agricultural Defense Coordination (CDA, in Portuguese), is responsible for the inspection and incineration of the products, and the Institute for storage and transportation. The action also has the support of Environmental Company of the State of São Paulo (Cetesb, in Portuguese), an agency of the Environment Department, responsible for issuing all necessary licenses for the process.

InpEV will carry out the logistics, removing the obsolete products from more than 250 rural properties and taking them to the city of Mauá, in the metropolitan area of São Paulo, where the burning will take place. “Our expectation is to finish the burning process in three months. This is an action established by Governor Geraldo Alckmin to ensure the healthiness of foods, keeping this waste from reaching our production, and to preserve the environment, considering it is a chemical compound harmful to nature”, said the Secretary for Agriculture of São Paulo, Mr. Arnaldo Jardim.

According to the deputy coordinator of CDA, Mr. Mário Sérgio Tomazela, the Coordination sent to the Legislative Assembly a bill to regulate the inspection by the Agricultural Defense completely focused on the agricultural issue. “In addition, we have prepared the Animal and Plant Protection Management System (Gedave, in Portuguese) to control agrochemicals from the industry, through the distributor, reseller, and producer, and the return of the empty containers to the Receiving Units”, he said.

“With the regulation of Gedave, we can carry out a detailed monitoring of each gram of agrochemicals sold in São Paulo State, preventing trade and use of illegal products that can cause harm to the environment and to those who apply them”, added the Secretary for Agriculture, Mr. Arnaldo Jardim.

The control of residues and regulation of the use of agrochemicals will be done in partnership with the Biological Institute, an agency linked to the Secretariat for Agriculture of São Paulo. “We inspect the harvest of products such as tomatoes, bell peppers, strawberries, lettuces, guavas, carrots, and cucumbers, which will undergo routine monitoring and waste control. We are also committed to review and update the law on conservation, and inspecting the agricultural soil and issues related to integrated pest management.

The joint action of several entities and government agencies is one of the pillars of the Campo Limpo System, which is based on the principle of shared responsibilities among all the links in the production chain (farmers, manufacturers and distribution channels, with the support of the public authorities) to carry out the reverse logistics for the empty agrochemical containers. Brazil is a world reference in the environmentally correct destination of the material, sending 94% of primary plastic containers for recycling or incineration.

You can get to know more about the actions of the Campo Limpo program in the link below, in Portuguese

http://www.inpev.org.br/sistema-campo-limpo/sobre-o-sistema

The TV report explains how the integrated system works and points out that bees help in pollinating groves, which has helped to raise orange tree productivity by 35%. In addition, the presence of bees helps increasing the weight and number of seeds in the fruit.

Check the video below with the whole feature:

One example was the cover story of the April 2015 issue, titled “Aposta na Sustentabilidade” (Betting on Sustainability, in Portuguese). The article highlighted a series of researches and management in the field towards more natural, economical and efficient practices. The text explains some research lines of biological control such as the product reduction with spraying based on the pheromone of the citrus fruit borer and the Phytosanitary Alert system, helping citrus growers to monitore the psyllid (the insect vector of the citrus greening) and identifying the best moment for controlling.  The bet on natural enemies, bioinsecticides and more rational practices of water usage helped decreasing up to 70% of water when preventing citrus canker. The same percentage can be saved in psyllid control. For postbloom fruit drop, the decrease is up to 60%, for citrus black spot between 40 and 50%, and for citrus leprosis, 30%.

In its most recent issue, published last August, the magazine highlights a serie of practices and management strategies used in the field, that contributed for Brazilian groves to be able to stop the advances of citrus greening for the first time. With regional management and eliminating sick plants, the occurrence of the disease in the Citrus Belt, which covers the state of São Paulo and some towns in Minas Gerais, was of 16.2%, a rate similar to the one registered in the previous year and that indicates the disease hasn’t advanced.

With this kind of information, the citrus grower can see the results of best practices and use the best techniques to keep their groves environmentally sustainable and at the same time economically efficient.

The magazine is sent by mail, but there’s also a digital version you can download or read online.

To access the magazine, in Portuguese, go to the website http://www.fundecitrus.com.br/comunicacao/revistas/

In order to be effective when spraying the groves, it’s not enough to invest in technology, it’s also necessary to plan and pay attention to details in order for this operation to be economically efficient and environmentally sustainable. That is the main lesson presented by Brazilian citrus growers who have adopted different strategies and reached good results in phytosanitary control in their farms. One example is the citrus grower Mr. Frederico Lopes. Bachelor’s degree in Administration, he shares his time between managing 150 hectares of orange in his farm in the town of Tambaú, countryside of the state of São Paulo and working as a consultant in Markestrat. That’s why every inch of his property is carefully planned. In the case of spraying, the work begins even before the machines hit the field, with a conversation with technicians and operators in order to define the dosage of products. “It’s necessary that the whole team is well trained to assess the variables such as climate, wind, diseases, etc. From there, we stablish the best strategy to spray”, he says.

All this caution helps the grower to use just the absolutely necessary volume of product to keep the plants healthy, which avoids losses to his pocket and damages to the environment. But when we talk about spraying, there’s no “recipe” neither a “magical formula”. Each property has its own reality to which you have to adapt the managing. That is the lesson learned in the AgroMachado group, which has three thousand hectares of citrus, divided in six farms in São Paulo’s citrus belt. “It’s important to observe the reality of the farm to find the best solutions”, explains the manager of the group, Mr. Jonas Tadeu Barbosa. He is the responsible for every spraying done and nothing goes off the registered program in his worksheet that he carries everywhere he goes.

One of the examples of solution that he tells is the speed of the machines. After many studies, they realized that reducing the speed of the machines when applying, it was possible to reduce the volume of product applied. “In the case of citrus black spot, the volume of dosages applied was on average 50ml per cubic meter, when the average technical recommendation is 75ml per cubic meter”, he says. Another example that planning makes all the difference.

According to a report published by the Fundecitrus (Fund for Citrus Plant Protection), more than 7 thousand farmers grow oranges in the Citrus Belt of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. Most of them, small farmer, and many of them, running family businesses for generations. In order to guarantee that their activities are economically viable and sustainable, they need to be aware of the need to fulfill the requirements of the Brazilian labour law, one of the strictest in the world. This is a labour-intensive activity, considering that picking of the oranges is manual and involves hiring many pickers.