Agricultural Policies.

Since 2003 the government has promoted an ample revision of its marketing and income guarantee agricultural policy instruments. The objective is to increase public resources efficiency and expand the direct participation of private initiative in the process of stabilizing producers’ income. Therefore, the government has promoted the improvement of cooperation and coordination among members of the productive chains in order to overcome budgetary restrictions in executing the programmes of price and income guarantee. Law No. 11.076 of 31 December 2004, authorized the Federal Government to offer economic subsidies for contracts of agricultural product sale option, when issued by the private sector on behalf of rural producers and cooperatives. In this partnership the private companies take the place of the government with respect to the price guarantee.
Agricultural and Livestock Guarantee Programme (Proagro) seeks to exempt rural producers from meeting financial liabilities in rural working credit operations when they have income loss as a consequence of climatic adversities or diseases and plagues without a widespread method of combat, control, or prophylaxis. The insurance operations for Strengthening Family Agriculture (Pronaf), carried out by the Ministry of Agrarian Development, was included in Proagro in the 2004-2005 harvest and was denominated “Proagro Mais.” The Federal Government created the Agroenergy Development Programme aiming to strengthening agroenergy in the country (6). It establishes a framework for public and private actions involved in the generation of technology that will contribute to the sustainable production of renewable sources of energy. The main goal is to enhance the competitiveness of Brazilian agribusiness and provide support to public policies aiming at social inclusion, regional development and environmental sustainability. The agro-ecological zoning identifies areas suitable to sugar cane production and the ones where the planting should be avoided (environmental protection areas, vulnerable ecosystems, Indian reserves and areas used for other agricultural activities).
The climatic risk agricultural zoning, published by MAPA, is a technical tool to manage risks in agriculture which seeks to guide the granting of agricultural working credit and the acquisition of rural insurance and Proagro (5). Unlike other existing zonings, the agricultural zoning of climatic risk is based on the concepts of potentiality and agricultural aptitude. It analyzes the parameters related to soil, climate and plants, using mathematical and statistical functions to determine the probability of the occurrence of adverse climatic events that may cause crop losses. The agricultural zoning of climatic risk identifies the best planting time for the cultivars for each municipality, analyzes historical climatic series of at least 15 years, and cross-checks those data with information on the cycle of cultivars and type of soil according to its capacity of retaining water. The goal is to reduce the possibility that the cultivars suffer from climatic adversities in their more sensitive phases by following restrictions imposed by the zoning, which are easily assimilated and adopted by rural producers, agronomists, extension officer, financial agents, insurance companies, and other users.