Super El Niño will require an acceleration of the adaptation agenda in the field, warns the Brazil Coalition.

Given the predicted Super El Niño and the potential for increased losses related to extreme weather events in the country, Brazilian agribusiness needs to accelerate the adoption of good production practices, expand the recovery of degraded areas, and strengthen climate adaptation, using credit, rural insurance, and technical assistance as instruments. Sustainable land use, in this sense, is fundamental to preparing the countryside for an increasingly unstable climate scenario, argues the Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition in a new document of proposals for candidates in the 2026 elections. The warning comes at a critical moment, with a new analysis from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indicating an 81% chance of El Niño becoming very strong between October and December, which should increase the occurrence of heat waves, droughts, and intense rainfall. For the Brazil Coalition, this scenario reinforces the urgency of boosting the climate adaptation agenda, focusing on a strategic direction that reduces the vulnerabilities of the productive sector. "The prediction of an El Niño is no longer just a weather warning, but an urgent call to modernize our public policies for the agricultural sector," warns Leila Harfuch, a member of the Strategic Group of the Coalition and managing partner of Agroicone. "The phenomenon puts pressure on the climate adaptation agenda, requiring that insurance and rural credit be updated to offer predictability and protect producers' income in the face of increasingly frequent crop failures," she states. "We can no longer treat extreme events as exceptions; we need robust territorial planning and the swift implementation of the Forest Code to reduce vulnerabilities and guarantee the country's water, energy, productive, and food security." In addition to strengthening insurance and rural credit, the priority measures presented by the Coalition to candidates in the 2026 elections include the expansion of already consolidated technologies, such as no-till farming, the use of bio-inputs, and integrated systems, such as Crop-Livestock-Forest Integration (ILPF), which restore soil quality and increase the adaptability of production. "The resilience of Brazilian agriculture depends on the recognition of the sustainable use of land as an economic asset," says Rodrigo Castro, a member of the Coalition's Strategic Group and Country Director of the Solidaridad Foundation. "The Coalition's document also emphasizes the importance of considering land conservation and proper management as concrete economic assets, and not separate issues from the productive agenda. It is necessary to produce more and better, which necessarily involves the adoption of regenerative, low-carbon agriculture practices and soil conservation to build resilience in the face of climate irregularity." It is important to emphasize that Brazilian agriculture contributes to the food security of more than 1 billion people on the planet; ensuring our capacity for adaptation means guaranteeing the supply of almost 20% of the world's population,” warns Castro. According to the expert, by accelerating environmental regularization and integrating the conservation of native vegetation into production systems, “we are not only protecting biomes, but also shielding productivity against the effects of climate and guaranteeing Brazil's competitiveness in the global market,” he emphasizes. 

This text was translated by machine from Brazilian Portuguese.