When Carlos Magno de Medeiros Morais states that “The sertão resists in the face of climate change,” he is not talking about an academic abstraction. He is talking about a concrete territory, a lived experience, and a productive agricultural model that has resisted for generations in the Brazilian Semi-Arid region.
Mestre in Agroecology and coordinator of the Centro Sabiá, he built his career from the Paraíba sertão. His defense of family farming stems from this experience and gains strength amid the climate emergency.
The Brazilian Semi-Arid region is the most populous in the world. It is home to about 30 million people living in a territory where rainfall is concentrated in just a few months and evaporation exceeds the precipitated volume. Add to that the concentration of rains in three or four months and long periods of drought. With climate change, the situation worsens.
Research from the National Institute for Space Research indicates that the Semi-Arid region is one of the country’s most vulnerable territories. Carlos cites the example of Jataúba, on the border between Pernambuco and Paraíba, which in just a few years has already lost 40% of its annual average rainfall. In addition, irregularity has increased: the annual volume can drop in just a few days, making planting unfeasible.
It is in this scenario that family farming reveals its centrality.
Where Brazil’s food is
Nearly half of Brazil’s family farming is concentrated in the Northeast, with a large part in the Semi-Arid region. It is mostly rainfed agriculture, dependent on the rainfall regime.
Without large irrigation systems, farmers plant at the right time, integrate cropping with native vegetation, diversify crops, and ensure food even in adverse conditions. This model, based on diversity and adaptation to the territory, is what Carlos considers capable of sustaining the region’s food security.
For him, while agribusiness operates with monocultures vulnerable to climate extremes and dependent on external inputs, family farming works with more resilient systems, connected to the soil, biodiversity, and knowledge accumulated over generations.
The defense of family farming is linked to a concept built more than three decades ago by Northeastern social movements: living with the Semi-Arid region.
“If we’ve always lived here, why should we leave? Why do we have to fight the drought?” Instead of treating the climate as an enemy, the proposal is to adapt to it, valuing traditional knowledge and incorporating science. Rainwater harvesting, agroecological management, preservation of the Caatinga, and productive diversification are strategies that increase the resilience of farming families.
“It is essential that Brazilian universities focus on trying to solve these problems as well. Scientific knowledge serves to help us understand reality and act in the best way. But this cannot be done without also looking at the knowledge accumulated by the population,” he said.
For the researcher, the response to the climate and food crisis will not come from isolated or top-down solutions. It arises from the combination of science, ancestral knowledge, and the strengthening of family farming—an equation that, in his view, is simple and urgent: it is from this alliance that food on the table can be guaranteed in times of climate instability.
The reality is that the climate crisis is already impacting food production worldwide. Floods in the South and Southeast, prolonged droughts in the Northeast, record heat waves. The industrial food system shows its fragilities.
From the Paraíba sertão, Carlos Magno argues that the response will not come from miraculous or exclusively technological solutions. It will come from strengthening those who already produce food adapted to the territory.
The statement may sound bold, but in the Semi-Arid region, it is everyday. Where rainfall decreases and the land demands care, those who remain producing food are not the concentrated model, but farming families. Perhaps the future of global food lies less in commodities and more in these territories that have learned, for centuries, to live with recurrent crises.
Source: brasil247.com