In Brazil, flood-hit farmers are building back better

All images courtesy of Marcia Riva.

In May, Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, was hit by the country’s worst floods in nearly a century, killing 180 people and leaving more than 600,000 homeless.

While the waters have since subsided, local people – and especially smallholder farmers – face a long road to recovery.

“Historically, we have supplied the city with healthy food,” says Marcia Riva, a family farmer who works at Pão da Terra, a bakery that produces organic food and is linked to the Landless Workers’ Movement of Rio Grande do Sul and the Cooperative of Workers from Agrarian Reform Settlements of the Porto Alegre Region (COOTAP).

“Today, we don’t even have a plant to make tea – we have absolutely nothing left.”

Riva belongs to one of 420 families associated with COOTAP whose crops were wiped out by the deluge.

“It’s more than losing our production – it’s losing our point of reference,” she says, fighting back tears. “It’s losing our history, which has been severely damaged by the climate crisis.”

Family farming is the backbone of food production in Rio Grande do Sul. According to a survey by the state’s technical assistance and extension department released at the end of May, the floods affected more than 206,000 rural properties, with over 19,000 families losing some or all of their crops.

Meanwhile, 70 percent of small farmer cooperatives in the state have had their products lost or damaged or had difficulty distributing them to customers during the floods. Now, they’re focused on rebuilding and preparing for more disasters to come – especially droughts as La Niña draws near.

Riva still finds it difficult to talk about what happened, but “discussing it also heals,” she admits.

Her property is located in the city of Eldorado do Sul – the most affected municipality in the state, where 81 percent of houses were submerged.

Cooperatives incur millions in losses

COOTAP suffered over BRL 11 million (USD 2.24 million) in damage to its equipment and infrastructure, according to its president, Nelson Krupinski.

The cooperative, which operates in 17 municipalities and 35 settlements in Rio Grande do Sul, is linked to the Landless Workers’ Movement, which carries out land reform, practices ecological food production, and improves living conditions in rural areas.

Less than six months after it was last hit by floods, its headquarters, crops, storage facilities, vehicles and machinery were left under water.

This time, the cooperative lost 86,000 sacks of certified organic rice that had not yet been harvested – representing a quarter of its crop.

Moreover, Krupinski says many losses cannot yet be accounted for as they require specialized auditing, especially regarding soil and irrigation analysis.

Given these dire circumstances, the cooperative has requested funds for reinvestment from the federal government.

“There’s no point in forgiving debt if the farmer has no way to reinvest,” says Krupinski.

The Senate’s Agriculture Committee is voting on a bill that would cancel the debts of farmers in Rio Grande do Sul and postpone the repayment dates of rural financing installments in areas affected by the floods.

The Ministry of Finance has also granted discounts of up to 30 percent for new loans contracted through the National Program for Strengthening Family Farming (Pronaf) for the rest of the year.

Krupinski says the cooperative’s main focus since the floods has been debt renegotiation and seeking investment for reconstruction. It has also provided psychological assistance for members affected by the disaster.

Now, its goal is to uphold its mission of pursuing agroecology.

“We will strengthen and maintain the agroecological and organic production project in our settlements,” he says. “This is our mission: we will prove that it is possible to produce on a large scale to feed Brazilian society.”

“We want to reaffirm the project even though the farmers who suffered from the flood are not the ones who caused it,” Krupinski concludes.

How cooperatives can promote agroecology

Elsewhere in the state, another cooperative is encouraging its members to adopt agroecology to adapt and build resilience against climate disasters.

Of the 308 members of the Mixed Cooperative of Family Farmers of Itati, Terra de Areia and Três Forquilhas (COOMAFITT), 15 percent have obtained organic certification.

But getting certified is both expensive and risky, and the cooperative still has work to do to entice farmers to make the transition, says its treasurer and project coordinator, Michel Lara de Oliveira.

“There are many studies showing that agroecological farmers are more resilient to climate disasters,” says Lara. “We’ve noticed greater losses among conventional farmers in the cooperative.”

Until they’re certified, farmers still have to sell their products as conventional. So, as an incentive, the cooperative pays 15 percent more to members who are transitioning.

“Since March 2023, we have had five floods here in the Três Forquilhas River Valley, even though we are still one of the regions in the state with the most preserved forest areas,” says Lara. As a result, he emphasizes the importance of transitioning to agroecology to build the resilience of farmers and crops alike.

The cooperative is also critical of how credit is currently granted by the federal government for family farming, with funding primarily provided to individual properties.

“We see that family farmers – who have already taken loans – take out more loans to cover losses from extreme climate events, and so on,” he points out. “So, they’re always in debt.”

Lara believes a solution would be to grant credit to organizations, such as credit and agricultural production cooperatives, rather than to farmers directly. 

This would reduce the risk to the farmers and incentivize them to turn to other production models as their debts wouldn’t be in their own names.

The role of public policy

Despite offering many benefits to their members, Brazilian farmer cooperatives ultimately rely on policy support to sell their products.

One cooperative network in Rio Grande do Sul wants policymakers to enhance programs to supply public schools with meals made from family farm products, as well as procurement through municipalities and state entities.

The Association of the Network of Family Farming and Solidarity Economy Cooperatives of Rio Grande do Sul (Redecoop-RS) encompasses 52 cooperatives that provide livelihoods for 12,000 families.

Cooperatives like Redecoop-RS play an important role in guaranteeing sales for associated farmers while also encouraging them to build climate resilience through agroecology, says the network’s coordinator, Bruno Engel Justin.

“Sustainability practices need to be more permanent, and this can and should be implemented by cooperatives,” he says. “They play a role in organizing production, so it’s effective to create strategies to incentivize agroecology through cooperatives.”

Considering the recent history of climate disasters in southern Brazil, he adds that it’s crucial to support market demand with public policies, as well as to factor the climate crisis into policy formulation at the state and federal levels.

Brazilian agroecology still needs support

This year, Brazil’s largest agricultural financing program, the Plano Safra, has allocated BRL 85.7 billion (USD 15.7 billion) to family farmers – a 10-percent increase from last year.

This includes BRL 76 billion (USD 13.9 billion) in rural credit to pay for investments, new equipment and commercialization – 43 percent more than was granted two years ago.

To encourage agroecology, the program also offers lower interest rates for organic, agroecological and biodiverse products.

But social movements say that the amounts are still insufficient to meet the sector’s needs, which some government officials have acknowledged.

“We understand that cooperativism and agroecology are ways of doing agriculture that address climate risks,” says Ana Terra Reis, secretary of supply, cooperativism and food sovereignty at the Ministry of Agrarian Development.

Terra points out that family farming has historically been undervalued in Brazil, which is why it only receives 20 percent of public funding, while large-scale agribusiness receives the remaining 80 percent.

“We cannot forget that the value placed on family farming is historical,” she explains. “This is a model that has been built as a legacy of colonial Brazil.”

“We have a commitment from our secretariat to promote agroecology and cooperativism, encouraging other production models. In this regard, Rio Grande do Sul has always been a beacon for the rest of Brazil in terms of cooperativism and agroecology.”