Agriculture in the Anthropocene

Maurício Ant?nio Lopes - Researcher at Embrapa Agroenergy

Anthropocene is an unofficial term for a geological time period increasingly used to describe the most recent era of Earth's history, when human activity began to have a significant impact on the planet's climate and ecosystems. Derived from the Greek words anthropo, meaning "human," and ceno, meaning "new," the proposal for a "recent age of humans" may succeed the Holocene - the period that began approximately 12,000 years ago, which was the stage for the spread of the human species and its impacts throughout the world.

Defining a new geological era of our own making may seem excessive and even arrogant, considering that the geological eras described thus far have endured for extremely long periods. For example, the dinosaurs reigned supreme on the planet for 140 million years, thousands of times longer than the recorded history of humanity thus far. However, it is easy to see that no other species has achieved the human capacity to subvert the geological scale that has previously operated on the planet.

In a very short period, we became capable of extracting and using fossil and mineral resources massively, which promoted profound alterations in the oceans and terrestrial landscapes, with the expansion of agriculture and the incessant advance of cities. Cement, steel, and plastic have become pillars of modern civilization, demanded in enormous and growing quantities for decades. Highways, railways, sea and air routes crisscross the planet in all directions and accentuate human action everywhere.

Therefore, more than a scientifically founded meaning based on the notion of geological time, the concept of the Anthropocene has strong symbolism, as it renews attention to natural environments and their significance for the functioning of the planet and the well-being of living beings. It is a stimulus to know, manage, and extract progress and wealth from our natural heritage in a more intelligent and sustainable way, using human creativity and ingenuity to adjust society's trajectory towards a new paradigm of progress.

The result of human activity on nature has enormous significance for agriculture and the food system, since the degradation of natural resources and critical ecosystem functions can weaken or even destroy the foundations on which food production is built. Hence the imperative need for alternative systems to traditional agricultural production, with a more intelligent combination of nature's resources and technological innovations, in order to increase efficiency, sustainability, and resilience, in line with ongoing social, economic, and demographic changes. Changes that affect diets, lifestyles, attitudes, and expectations of a more urban, well informed and demanding society.

The fact is that the popularization of the concept of the Anthropocene has highlighted design flaws in traditional agriculture, which will need to be reinvented to meet society's needs while safeguarding ecosystem integrity. It is difficult to imagine promising futures for agriculture models based on the mistaken premise that the planet's material resources are limitless. The most likely scenario is that agriculture will be challenged to feed a growing population by mimicking nature's ability to use resources efficiently, incorporating waste, conserving soil and water, and sequestering carbon rather than emitting it.

Brazil may be the country with the best prospects for consolidating a contemporary agriculture model capable of helping to repair the earth's system, by adopting practices that go far beyond neutralizing the impacts of the Anthropocene. Regenerative, diversified, and systemic agriculture is already expanding in the country, with integrated production models developed by Embrapa – the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation - to combine crops, livestock, and forests in the same space, opening up paths for Brazil to harvest even "carbon crops" in the future, with gains in economic, environmental, and image dimensions, responding to consumers eager for sustainability.

In line with the emerging Bioeconomy, tropical agriculture can, like no other, make great strides in the field of biorefining, deriving from biomass renewable industrial components, helping to repair and compensate for the negative impacts of energy, chemical, and material industries, which are still highly carbonized. Brazil is already a global reference in biorefining of sugarcane, from which sugar, ethanol, biodiesel, bioelectricity, biogas, and multiple low-impact industrial components are produced. Embrapa, Brazilian universities, and companies are already dedicated to deriving bio-products for various Bioeconomy value chains from biomass and agricultural and agro-industrial waste.

These developments indicate that we have a promising path ahead. Fortunately, many already understand that, in the face of Anthropocene reality, it makes no sense to consider agriculture a simple economic activity, part of the primary sector. It is urgent to understand it as an essential activity that affects and shapes our way of existing in the world. By embracing a model of regenerative, systemic, and multifunctional agriculture, the actors involved can adhere to a new social contract and to the mission to feed the world while simultaneously repairing the planet.

?This article was originally published by the Correio Braziliense newspaper in Brasilia, DF, Brazil on January 8, 2022.

Keywords:?Anthropocene; Geological era; Human impact; Natural resources; Agriculture; Sustainable practices; Regenerative agriculture; Bioeconomy; Brazilian agriculture; Ecosystem integrity

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#Embrapa