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Agriculture has the potential to capture 10% to 20% of global CO2 emissions. “If we want to tackle climate change, we need to invest in agriculture,” said Gilberto Tomazoni, Global CEO of JBS, during the session ‘New Trilemma: Climate, Development and the Middle-Class’, at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, held on January 23 in Davos, Switzerland.
At the same session, former US Vice President Al Gore said he agreed with Tomazoni on the need to invest in agriculture. Gore said that new advances in measuring and testing carbon sequestration through regenerative agriculture make it possible to use many approaches to tackle climate change.
“If we compensated farmers on that basis, it would help them get through the two- to three-year transition period [needed for a new production model]. Farmers want this because extreme weather events are making their farms more vulnerable to water and wind erosion,” he said.
Tomazoni mentioned data from the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad), which shows that only 4% of investment in climate change goes to food systems, with small farmers receiving just 1%. In this scenario, 67% of people living in poverty live in rural areas. “If we support agriculture, we can take millions of people out of poverty and, at the same time, boost economic development and make progress in tackling the climate challenge,” he said.
At JBS, 60% of suppliers are small farmers. In this situation, Tomazoni described the company’s focus on providing financial and technological support for regenerative agriculture. “Small producers need support, not just financial support, but also technical assistance on how to do it. We need to do this, because they are a great force for transformation,” he said.
The session was mediated by Haslinda Amin, a Bloomberg anchor in Singapore, and included the participation of Dani Rodrik, professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Teresa Ribera, Vice-President of the European Commission.
