By 2026, ambitious target to recover over 300 thousand hectares of degraded land in Cerrado Brazil and regenerate agricultural soils in China.
Syngenta Group, the leading global agriculture technology company, and The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a world-wide conservation organization with the mission to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends, today renewed their successful collaboration that links conservation goals with economic potential and addresses societal issues like deforestation and land degradation. The two partners have been collaborating since 2009 and entered into a global collaboration in 2018.
The new three-year collaboration builds on successful projects and focuses on further advancing business practices with the goals to scale up regenerative agriculture, improve resource efficiency to minimize impact of agriculture on climate, improve soil health, and promote habitat protection in major agricultural regions worldwide including the Cerrado region of Brazil, China, and the United States. The collaboration embodies Syngenta’s commitment to regenerate soil and nature, core to its new Group-wide sustainability priorities announced in April 2024.
Petra Laux, Chief Sustainability Officer of Syngenta Group: “We are very proud to continue our collaboration with TNC and our partnership for impact. We want to further leverage our efforts towards a climate solution-oriented agriculture fueled by innovation and partnerships that regenerate soil and protect nature. Agriculture must not only feed a growing global population over the coming decades, but it also needs to fight climate change and safeguard natural resources.”
Syngenta has set an ambitious target to recover 1 million hectares of degraded land throughout Brazil, with a significant portion focused on the Cerrado where the TNC collaborates with the company.
The goal of the initiative is to make the restoration of degraded land the profitable option sought by farmers in Brazil when expanding their production, instead of clearing native vegetation. The REVERTE® program, originally designed by Syngenta and TNC for the Cerrado due to its significant potential, includes Itaú BBA bank as the organization offering a line of credit for the growers following socio-environmental criteria.
Michael Doane, Global Managing Director Food & Freshwater Systems, TNC: “REVERTE® aims to demonstrate, through an integrated solution involving good agricultural practices, financial tools, policy, and business models, the economic viability of restoring degraded pastures instead of opening new cultivation areas and avoiding deforestation. Restoring land in the Cerrado delivers soil and water conservation benefits, increases carbon sequestration, and can increase the resilience of the production systems to extreme climate events. The program aims to support the transformation of agribusiness in the Cerrado, generating social, economic, and environmental benefits today and in the future.”
