Project portfolio

Pastures

Technology and sustainability in Brazilian pastures

Brazil has the largest meat herd in the world. In the bovine herd alone, there are 213.7 million head. The country is also the third largest milk producer, responsible for 34.8 million liters in 2019. 
Almost 90% of the Brazilian meat is from pasture-raised livestock.
Pastures are Brazil's competitive advantage.

Photo : Fabiano Bastos

The pastures that feed the world

Cattle farming is one of the pillars of Brazilian agribusiness.  In Brazil, the activity fulfills an important economic, environmental, and social function, and plays a relevant role in the world scene. 

Around 160 million hectares of pastures  occupy almost half of the rural establishments in the country and feed more than 200 million animals, including oxen, sheep, goats, horses, and buffaloes. 

To make this viable, science has studied alternatives that respect the characteristics of each biome in the country, and the Pastures Portfolio aims to meet the needs that emerge in the production sector, which is equally diverse.  As a result, Brazil is becoming increasingly able to contribute to the growing world demand for quality food. 

The offer of technological solutions for the different production systems aims to overcome major challenges, such as maintaining pasture production capacity  in the course of time while being respectful to the environment and to animal welfare. 

Research has focused on the development of technologies to fulfill demands that relate to sustainable pasture uses, including forage species that are adapted to the conditions in the different Brazilian biomes. The goal is to improve the cattle farming activity, ensuring gains in productivity and competitiveness in the sector, while reducing the pressure to clear new areas and its environmental impact. 

 

Download the folder for the portfolio (PDF file in Portuguese)

Innovation challenges

 
  • To ensure the provision of ecosystem services for provisioning, regulation, and support of planted and natural pastures in the different Brazilian biomes, including carbon sequestration.
  • To increase the persistence and yield of pastures in low fertility soils.
  • To sustainably manage spittlebugs, rice weevils, caterpillars, mites, leaf spots, mosaics, and viruses in planted and natural pastures.
  • To promote biological nitrogen fixation and the improvement of animal diets by incorporating and expanding the cultivation of forage legumes in the agricultural production systems of the different biomes.
  • To increase the persistence and adaptation of pastures in areas of poorly drained soils in the Amazon and Pantanal biomes.
  • To ensure the availability of forage and the persistence of pastures in the Brazilian semiarid to feed herds throughout the year
  • To ensure the availability of forage and the persistence of pastures under low temperatures and frost conditions in Southern Brazil.
  • To improve the performance of agricultural systems in the Caatinga, Pampa, and Pantanal biomes through the efficient management of natural pastures that are adapted to those environments.
  • To produce more meat and milk from pasture-fed livestock by reducing forage  off-season or break periods in pastures in the Atlantic rainforest, Cerrado, Pantanal, Amazon rainforest, and Pampa biomes. 
  • To reduce the damages caused by annoni grass infestations in planted and natural pastures in the southern region. 
  • To reduce damages caused by weeds in cultivated pastures at the Amazon, Cerrado, and Pantanal biomes.
  • To indicate suitable areas and establish the edaphoclimatic risk level for the cultivation of Embrapa grasses for forage and/or seed production. 

Portfolio Management Committee

The Portfolio Management Committee works to define innovation challenges and oversee the portfolio of projects.
 

Chairperson:

Executive secretary:

Partnerships and business

Embrapa's Innovation Model focuses on open innovation, which relies on partnerships since the beginning of each project for the sake of the market insertion of new assets. Find out how to jointly invent with Embrapa technological solutions that add value to business and enable innovation in the agricultural production sector.

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