Reconfiguring the Brazilian Agrifood System through Tropical Regenerative Agriculture

AGRIFOOD TRANSITION AS SYSTEM RECONFIGURATION

Over the past twenty years, research on socio-environmental transitions has expanded dramatically, drawing on empirical evidence of socio-technical, institutional and behavioral change in areas ranging from the decline of coal in the United Kingdom to electric mobility and domestic heating (Geels & Turnheim 2022). The field now known as Sustainability Transitions Research initially concentrated on the capacity of technological niches to challenge dominant regimes. More recently, it has incorporated processes of regime destabilization, the deliberate decline of long-established configurations, interactions among regimes and the governance of transition processes (Simoens et al. 2026).

This shift matters because sustainability transitions cannot be reduced to the diffusion of isolated technologies. They concern structural transformations in the systems through which societies convert resources into the goods and services needed for human life. This is also the perspective adopted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) International Resource Panel and the 2024 Global Resources Outlook (UNEP 2024), which draws on the concept of provisioning systems developed by Fanning et al. (2020). Energy, the built environment, mobility and food together account for around 90% of the material, energy and biotic resources used in the contemporary provision of goods and services.

The global agrifood system must therefore be analyzed as a provisioning system and as a socio-technical regime. This article argues that the geopolitical, economic and environmental foundations of the Green Revolution model are becoming increasingly unstable. Brazil is deeply embedded in that model, but it is also the source of innovations that may contribute to its reconfiguration. Tropical Regenerative Agriculture offers an emerging pathway to reduce dependence on imported and synthetic inputs, restoring biological processes and strengthening the resilience of agricultural landscapes. Its importance lies not in proposing the wholesale replacement of Brazilian agricultural structure, but in showing how large-scale production itself can move towards a different technological and institutional foundation.

A COHERENT GLOBAL REGIME AND BRAZIL’S CENTRAL ROLE

Speaking of the agrifood system in the singular may seem questionable given the enormous variety of cultivation, animal-rearing, food-preparation and consumption practices across the world, as Dan Saladino (2021) has shown. However, this diversity does not alter the fact that most of the material, energy and biological resources used in the global supply of food, and much of the resulting socio-environmental damage, are organized through a remarkably coherent set of technologies, interests and institutions.

This coherence emerged from the Green Revolution of the 1960s. Led symbolically by Norman Borlaug, it played a decisive civilizational role in the second half of the 20th century by increasing yields and helping reduce hunger. Drawing on the best science available at the time, the model combined genetically improved seeds with synthetic fertilizers and the large-scale use of pesticides in increasingly monotonous production environments (Abramovay et al. 2025). Corporate investment was central to its expansion and progressively deepened farmers’ dependence on externally supplied technologies and markets (Clapp 2025; ETC Group 2022).

Rachel Carson (1962) described this technological orientation as a “war against nature.” In Brazil, Ana Primavesi, José Lutzenberger and Adilson Paschoal developed similar criticisms. Until the end of the 20th century, however, these ideas remained largely confined to social movements and parts of the scientific community. They did not substantially alter dominant patterns in agronomic, veterinary and nutritional research, public policy, business practice or rural extension.

That situation has changed. Evidence increasingly shows that the technologies underpinning agricultural expansion, together with dominant forms of food industrialization and consumption, are incompatible with the preservation of ecosystem services and human health. The agrifood system accounts for approximately one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions (Crippa et al. 2021), is the main driver of biodiversity loss (IPBES 2019), and contributes to the transgression of several planetary boundaries (Rockström et al. 2025). It is also associated with health risks stemming from ultra-processed foods (Van Tulleken 2023) and the intensive use of antibiotics in concentrated animal production (Albernaz-Gonçalves et al. 2024).

Brazil lies at the center of this system because of its importance in global grain and animal-product markets. Its leadership was built through production methods closely associated with the Green Revolution. At the same time, Brazilian agriculture has generated important innovations. No-till farming has helped reduce soil erosion, while biological nitrogen fixation through soybean inoculants has sharply reduced the need for nitrogen fertilizers in that crop.

These achievements, combined with Brazil’s position in international markets, underpin a powerful narrative that Brazilian agriculture is both exceptionally productive and the most sustainable in the world. This narrative reached particular prominence during COP30 in Belém. Deforestation is often treated as external to the technological core of agriculture, allowing business organizations and public institutions to argue that the country’s main challenge is not transforming production, but communicating its existing sustainability more effectively. As Caio Pompeia (2021) shows, this narrative is sustained by a coherent combination of institutions, policies, socio-technical standards and business culture.

The problem is that improvements associated with particular techniques do not necessarily amount to a systemic transition. No-till farming and inoculants have coexisted with increasing dependence on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. The decisive question is therefore not whether Brazilian agriculture has produced sustainable innovations, but whether these innovations alter the technological and institutional logic of the dominant regime.

A REGIME UNDER PRESSURE

Developments in the first half of 2026 exposed cracks in two foundations of Brazil’s agricultural expansion since the 1970s. The first is the assumption that food security will continue to rest on trade liberalization and long global value chains. The second is confidence that the Green Revolution’s socio-technical regime can maintain productivity while preserving the ecosystem services on which agriculture depends. The pressures on these foundations can be grouped into three connected dimensions.

Geopolitical and Commercial Vulnerability

Food sovereignty is returning to the center of national strategies. Adam Tooze (2026), drawing on a 2026 report by Systemiq and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (2026), highlights China’s ambition to reduce its pig industry’s dependence on imported plant protein from the Americas. Systemiq estimates that Chinese soybean imports could decline over the next fifteen years by 86% from the United States and 36% from Brazil. Such a change would directly affect the Brazilian agricultural structure in which soybean, generally combined with maize, occupies more than half of the cropland.

The same sovereignty agenda applies to agricultural inputs. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had already revealed the vulnerability generated by dependence on imported fertilizers. The subsequent US and Israeli aggression against Iran made even clearer that the technological foundations of agriculture are exposed to geopolitical disruption. For farmers, this dependence means higher costs and uncertainty. For Brazil, it means that a sector celebrated as a source of national strength relies on external supplies the country does not control.

Animal-product exports face related pressures. Their future may be affected by China’s potential emergence as a major exporter and by European restrictions linked to antibiotic use in concentrated livestock systems. These developments indicate that environmental and health standards are becoming part of international competitiveness, market access and food-security strategies.

Economic and Ecological Exhaustion

Land yields continue to grow, but the productivity of the inputs used to obtain them does not follow the same trajectory. Rattan Lal’s (2024) work indicates that, over the past twenty years, each unit of grain produced globally has required increasing quantities of inputs. Research by Instituto Escolhas and Instituto Folio (2025) identifies the same pattern in Brazilian soybean production: the application of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides has increased over three decades, including per unit of output.

This trend is economically significant. No-till farming and inoculants have not prevented the rise in chemical-input dependence. Production costs are increasing in Brazil, Argentina (Cáceres & Gras 2020) and the United States (Foroohar 2026), and the growth of farmers’ indebtedness in Brazil is inseparable from the technological basis of production. A model designed to raise output is becoming progressively less efficient at using externally purchased inputs.

Its ecological costs are also intensifying. Global biogeochemical flow studies show that nitrogen and phosphorus have crossed the planetary boundary defining a safe operating space for humanity, with agriculture making a decisive contribution. In the Cerrado, a tropical savanna in central Brazil, the climate crisis now threatens the territories that supported the 20th century’s most important tropical agricultural expansion. Rattis et al. (2021) estimate that 51% of the Cerrado’s agricultural soils may be outside their optimum climate space by 2030, potentially rising to 74% by 2060.

Nutrition and Health

The crisis also appears in food quality and consumption. Fortieri et al. (2026) identify declining nutritional content in grains used for animal feed, a conclusion reinforced by David Montgomery and Biklé’s (2022) recent work. Marcos Buckeridge, in a not yet published work, describes the possible emergence of “caloric abundance accompanied by nutritional impoverishment.” Animal feed must consequently be supplemented with additives whose supply in Brazil is largely import-dependent.

At the other end of the chain, almost two-thirds of caloric intake in the United States comes from ultra-processed products based on industrial formulations associated with the global obesity pandemic. Together with antibiotic dependence in livestock systems, these trends show that the regime’s problems cannot be measured only in yields or export earnings. They concern the capacity of the agrifood system to provide healthy diets while maintaining the ecological conditions of future production.

TROPICAL REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE AS A TRANSITION PATHWAY

Brazil is not starting from zero. Embrapa, the Biological Institute of São Paulo, State research bodies and universities have accumulated knowledge fundamental to the emergence of Tropical Regenerative Agriculture. The Federal University of Goiás inaugurated a Center of Excellence in One Health in 2025, bringing together researchers seeking alternatives to Green Revolution technologies. The initiatives of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement in rice production in Rio Grande do Sul and the work of organizations such as AS-PTA and Instituto Sabiá demonstrate the diversity of this experimental field.

Particularly significant is the Associated Group for Sustainable Agriculture (GAAS), which emerged less than a decade ago in the heart of Brazil’s soybean region. It began with a farmer who could no longer use conventional inputs because his property bordered a protected area. His search for alternatives helped generate a network that now brings together around 700 farmers and organizes technical meetings across Brazil.

GAAS defines Tropical Regenerative Agriculture as a transformative alternative to the model inherited from the Green Revolution. Instead of relying primarily on chemical inputs, it proposes the integrated management of agroecosystems, based on the interdependence of biological, physical and chemical processes that sustain soil quality and resilience. Its distinctive contribution is the adoption of one additional technique. It addresses the foundations of Brazilian agriculture, especially dependence on pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and links farm-level technologies to landscape management beyond the farm gate.

Tropical Regenerative Agriculture is therefore both scientific and normative. It treats the interactions among living organisms as a fundamental productive infrastructure. Contemporary research on microbial communities (Caruso 2026), relationships between fungi and plant roots (Van Nuland et al. 2025), biological inputs (Goulet et al. 2024), and mineral components is becoming central to production. Agriculture is not equated with untouched nature. Rather, biodiversity and its enrichment replace the systematic suppression of non-crop life as the organizing principle of agroecosystem management.

This approach also differs from models confined to certified products or specialized markets. Grain farmers are adopting regenerative practices to lower costs, reduce exposure to conventional inputs and stabilize their businesses. This gives the transition a broader social base. It may benefit family farmers, but it is also compatible with large-scale enterprises facing debt and deteriorating production conditions.

The main obstacles are institutional (Abramovay & Favareto 2025). Financing provided by trading companies and machinery and input suppliers already exceeds the resources offered through the Plano Safra, a Brazilian federal government program created to finance agricultural and livestock activities in the country. Commercial agents often exert more influence over farmers’ technological choices than public extension services. Credit arrangements, sales networks, business routines and professional cultures reproduce lock-in mechanisms even when alternatives are technically available.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS AND BRAZIL’S INTERNATIONAL CONTRIBUTION

Moving from an innovative niche to system reconfiguration requires more than the spontaneous diffusion of new techniques. Agricultural credit must reward credible transition plans, declining dependence on synthetic inputs, soil recovery and landscape resilience. Public research and rural extension need to support diagnosis, experimentation and adaptation to local ecological conditions. Regulation of biological inputs must ensure safety and efficacy without preventing decentralized production and territorial innovation. Indicators of agricultural success must extend beyond yields to include soil biological activity, input efficiency, crop diversity, water regulation, climate vulnerability and landscape integrity.

These measures also have an international dimension. Reducing dependence on imported inputs would strengthen Brazil’s economic and food sovereignty. Demonstrating that large-scale tropical agriculture can be reorganized around biological processes would give substance to the country’s climate and biodiversity diplomacy. It could also create a platform for scientific and technological cooperation with other tropical countries, particularly through South-South cooperation.

The transition proposed here is neither the abolition of commercial agriculture nor the continuation of the existing regime with a few greener technologies added. It is a reconfiguration of the knowledge, finance, regulation and infrastructure that organize production. Brazil’s importance to global food markets makes the risks of inaction particularly serious. The same importance affords the country an unusual opportunity to make Tropical Regenerative Agriculture a domestic development strategy and an international contribution to the ecological transition of the agrifood system.

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Submitted: July 30, 2026

Accepted for publication: August 18, 2026

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