Strengthening of a unique NGO-corporation collaboration model that links conservation goals with economic potential and addresses societal issues like deforestation and land degradation
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, 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 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.”
Restoring millions of hectares of degraded land in Brazil, China and the US 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.”
As of March 2024, REVERTE® has garnered commitments from over 263 farms, encompassing a total of 202 thousand hectares of degraded land, with 137 thousand in the Cerrado biome.
In China, the Run Tian project has already regenerated 2400 hectares of agricultural soils in the North China Plain, the largest wheat producing area in China. It has also trained more than 17 thousand farmers on regenerative agricultural practices, leading to increases in yields by 4%, soil moisture storage 300m3 per hectare and net benefit $360 per hectare. Moving forward, Run Tian will develop new business strategies to further improve soil health to empower and support frontline producers to protect the
soil ecosystem. It will also leverage Syngenta Group’s fast-growing network of Modern Agriculture Platform (MAP) centers that promote sustainable farming practices. The MAP offering helps farmers modernize their farms sustainably, while boosting crop quality, yield and farm profitability. As part of Syngenta Group’s recently published Sustainability Priorities, the company has a target to expand the number of farmer
service centers to 1000 by 2028.
