Sustainable Fruit farming In the CAatinga: managing ecosystem service trade-offs as agriculture intensifies (SUFICA)

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The SUFICA project aims to enhance the competitiveness, sustainability and long-term resilience of fruit farming in the São Francisco valley in north-eastern Brazil, as it intensifies. The project will work with growers and international supply companies to co-design and test nature-based innovations on fruit farms, aiming to generate multiple environmental benefits whilst enhancing fruit yield or quality and reducing inputs. It takes a trans-disciplinary approach, bringing scientists, farmers and industry together to tackle the challenge of managing a sensitive agro-ecosystem at the food-water-environment nexus, in the context of economic development. There are three major outcomes: 1) SUFICA experimentally tests 'ecological intensification' as a pathway to sustainable intensive agriculture; 2) SUFICA establishes the necessary research infrastructure and tools to monitor and continually improve biodiversity and ecosystem services on farms in the São Francisco valley; 3) SUFICA demonstrates how a partnership approach enables the benefits of agricultural growth and environmental protection to be combined. This approach can be applied in other developing countries.The SUFICA partnership is a response to strong market signals in the agri-food sector that farmers should take action to support biodiversity. The project links this biodiversity objective with production-enhancing ecosystem services - pollination and water flow regulation - to assess the potential for management that benefits both biodiversity and production. The approach, termed 'ecological intensification', has shown promise in Europe and North America, but has not been experimentally tested in tropical semi-arid environments.The underlying scientific hypothesis is that multiple regulating ecosystem services can be co-erced to flow in bundles, and thus be synergistically enhanced in semi-arid agricultural landscapes, with accompanying biodiversity benefits. SUFICA tests this hypothesis using a replicated, farm-scale, Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) experiment, co-designed with farmers to monitor the effects of management actions that are feasible and attractive to growers in the region. The SUFICA experiment is the first scientifically robust, replicated test of 'ecological intensification', in which multiple environmental and agronomic outcomes are directly monitored. We include carbon sequestration, as climate change mitigation in agriculture is a development goal for Brazil. The research will use state-of-the-art mapping and modelling approaches to explore mechanisms and predict changes to natural capital stock and ecosystem service delivery. The SUFICA experiment incorporates different landscape and farming contexts and builds capacity among farmers. Through carefully designed knowledge exchange processes, larger farms will learn from ecological and diversified practices of small farms, while small farms are supported to engage with international export markets. All farmers in the project will be involved in developing globally recognised farm-scale biodiversity assessment tools, through which they can demonstrate their positive actions.The São Francisco valley lies in the caatinga, a semi-arid ecoregion of seasonally dry tropical forest with globally important biodiversity. The caatinga is threatened by habitat loss and degradation due to agriculture, and predicted increases in aridity due to climate change. Agricultural development is key for both poverty reduction and long-term economic growth in Brazil. With old intensification trajectories, this growth will come at the expense of biodiversity and ecosystems, reducing long-term resilience and disproportionately impacting on smallholder farmers and the rural poor. SUFICA will establish a process and infrastructure to re-direct intensification to a more environmentally sensitive trajectory, aiming to reduce farm inputs and protect biodiversity in highly productive landscapes.