EMBRAPA: Institutional Building and Technological Innovations Required for Cerrado Agriculture

Abstract

A solid and highly effective institution was considered to be essential to achieve the required innovations for the development of Cerrado agriculture. In this regard, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA) was the key entity in the establishment of a strong innovation system for Cerrado agriculture. Therefore, this chapter first discusses the main principles that guided EMBRAPA and constituted the core of the ‘EMBRAPA model’ (Section 6.1). This aspect is important to show that EMBRAPA was ready for mature cooperation with the government of Japan through JICA, which will be discussed later. A summary of the EMBRAPA development process in terms of researchers and different types of expenditures follows (Section 6.2). The policy of Cerrado agriculture development is briefly explained in order to clarify the role that EMBRAPA has been expected to accomplish in this context. The government of Brazil chose to develop the Cerrado, and policies targeting this goal encompassed agriculture, infrastructure, research, universities (especially graduate programs), and rural and urban infrastructure. It was an all-inclusive regional development program (Section 6.3). The chapter goes on to discuss what kind of external cooperation would have been most effective for EMBRAPA to accomplish such a role, focusing on the most important issues that needed to be taken into account in formulating EMBRAPA’s institution building plan (Section 6.4).