It's important to say that Embrapa – one of the Republic’s jewels – is in crisis. It is not the first in its brief and remarkable 45-year history. But it is perhaps the most serious, with at least four dimensions: financial/budgetary, organizational, governance and lastly, but undoubtedly the most important, the identity crisis.
There is no doubt that Embrapa had – and continues to have – a relevant role in the recent development of Brazilian agriculture, alongside many other institutions and actors, among which several traditional universities stand out, such as Viçosa, Lavras, Luiz de Queiroz and Santa Maria, state research institutes, such as the now dying Agronomic, here in São Paulo, IAPAR in Paraná and Epagri in Santa Catarina, and private, national and multinational organizations and companies. But Embrapa – a strong and prestigious brand – tended to capitalize on its laurels almost alone, and its role was amplified by the competent work of its social communications team, which disseminated in society a perception of superpowers that no institution actually has. Perhaps the well-known verse by Chico Buarque de Holanda applies here, in Who saw you, who sees you: “I don’t really know for sure because one fine day those who played as princesses got used to the costume.” The fact is that Embrapa seems to have believed it was bigger than it actually is. And she didn't even need to, because what she is would guarantee her a unique role in the country's history!
Embrapa appears to be a victim of its own success, repeating a very Brazilian pattern that undermines successful public initiatives. This pattern is fueled by two sources: on the one hand, success tends to be intoxicating and goes to the heads of both managers and the majority of the organization's technical staff; on the other, the belief is quickly established that success – which is the result of specific technical and institutional competence – can be used in related areas and even in activities that are clearly outside the original mandate and training. This belief reinforces drunkenness and contaminates both the government(s) and others stakeholders like the organization itself, which is involved in numerous activities, almost always with great fuss to value its participation and contribution to society. Presidents, ministers, governors and mayors of the cities that host Embrapa centers mobilize it in search of solutions to a huge range of problems, and rarely receive a no for an answer. The result is a tremendous dispersion of resources and a loss of focus on its core mission. The qualified work of researchers ends up diverted to other tasks, which, although important, are outside individual and institutional competence. They may garner prestige, but do they produce effective results?
In this context, the exercise of humility, with the recognition of one's own limitations, is a necessary step to overcome the crisis and open space for Embrapa to focus its enormous competence on what is relevant and in fact strategic for the country. To achieve this, it is necessary to have an in-depth understanding of Brazilian agriculture, its recent transformations, its challenges, the production dynamics, the demands of markets and society, and identify, realistically, what its contribution can be.
Packed on real success, but also on a narrative that exaggerated its achievements and powers, Embrapa embarked on an ambitious path of expansion, with the creation of new research centers, expansion of the number of researchers and involvement in a very wide range of research. – all considered essential and strategic for the country – and equally relevant public policies, like practically everything that governments do. This expansion and operations also followed a very Brazilian pattern, which abandoned the exercise of long-term planning necessary to build the future that we all declared to desire a few decades ago. At least in part, the expansion seems to have been influenced by political variables quite foreign to what would appear to be more rational for the company and especially for the country. Some decisions were certainly determined by opportunities that could not be missed, such as the investments associated with the PAC, offered to the company by the Federal Government in an election year, on a “take it or leave it” basis, without giving it enough time to identify priorities, evaluate costs and benefits, estimate the return to society and the permanent impacts on funding, labor needs, etc. Despite always presenting very positive social reports, I am not aware of recent independent assessments on the impact and role of the new – and also the old – Embrapa units, which could guide the necessary restructuring of the company to adapt it to today's reality and anticipate look at the scenarios that are emerging for the future.
This growth is at the root of the various dimensions that make up Embrapa's crisis. The units have the same structure, with a general manager, deputy general manager, head of R&D, administrative head, communications and administrative and operational support staff. In addition to the obvious budgetary implications, perhaps the biggest cost is on work capacity, since the leadership positions are occupied by researchers – generally with a lot of experience and technical prominence in their areas of expertise –, who tend to abandon/reduce their research activities while exercising management and coordination positions. Many do not return to research after their mandates end, and remain in consultancies, at headquarters or in their own units, and may even be marginalized when their successor is associated with a rival political group. It is not uncommon to get a bad boss and lose a good researcher, although these facts never come to light in the evaluations made.
Embrapa's financial crisis is no different from that affecting a large number of public sector institutions, including universities in São Paulo, and is directly associated with a rigid composition of expenses, which prevents agile adjustments to face lean periods. However, we cannot just talk about a lack of resources. Embrapa's budget grew 10% between 2016 and 2017, reaching R$3,3 billion, and even in the face of evidence that the recession was coming, it maintained its spending pattern as if it could be immune to the adjustments that were underway. In the context of fiscal restrictions that should mark public policy in the immediate future, there is no way out for Embrapa without undergoing a resizing, designed to strengthen its core activities, which will need to be redefined based on a broad internal debate and with its stakeholders, and to free up the budget to cover other research items, and not just labor. The question that needs to be asked by all of Embrapa: what are we, where do we want to get to and how are we going to get there?
Overcoming gigantism in a rational way is an almost impossible challenge in the Brazilian public sector, whether due to the guaranteed rights of employees or institutional inertia that prevents closing or restructuring State organizations. The most common practice is to let institutions die slowly, or live in irrelevance, here and there achieving some result due to the perseverance of their staff. In the case of Embrapa, letting it follow this path would be a crime against the country, but to avoid this fate it will be necessary to carry out a sanitary intervention to functionally reposition some units whose initial mandates and location were surpassed by transformations in the country's agriculture, and, if applicable, even close one or the other, and return a good number of researchers to activities that they know how to do with excellence: research. It makes no sense to train international level researchers, such as those at Embrapa, and divert them to management roles for which they were not prepared. It will also be necessary to open space for renewal and requalification of the staff in order to adapt their skills and capabilities to the new reality of Brazilian agriculture, to the new challenges that are already posed by the paradigm of sustainability, from water management to climate change, as well as the old, with emphasis on expanding the base of competitive and sustainable producers. And without falling into the temptation of escaping its mandate, and trying to resolve gaps that are outside the competence of a research institution.
The organizational dimension of the crisis is one of the most evident. The company's growth was accompanied by a swelling of the headquarters and the adoption of sophisticated systems of planning, resource allocation, administrative and decision controls that did not reestablish the ability to command and effectively coordinate the decentralized units, but produced a creative asphyxiation contrary to the recommended for research institutions in any area, and a bureaucracy that consumes many hours of researchers' work. It will undoubtedly be necessary to reduce the weight of the headquarters, review bureaucratic procedures, delegate more autonomy to the units and at the same time increase coordination capacity to reduce the dispersion of focus and the risks of agency problems, always present in corporations. in general. This can only be done when the company rediscovers its lost identity, and is clear, in fact, what its role is and what to do, without populism and arrogance that every now and then seems to contaminate the company's proposals and goals. The restructuring needs to be appropriate to the mission to be accomplished, and not taken from organizational manuals and models used by other institutions. In this context, it is also urgent to discuss the legal status of Embrapa (company, autarchy or a 'new' figure) and empower it with formal mechanisms to act in the world of innovation and carry out the business that falls within its competence. It is not possible to keep Embrapa under the yoke of the irrationality of some rules of Brazilian public administration, which do not apply, at all, to cutting-edge research institutions, which need to interact with the world in an agile manner (relevant research today is done in networks, increasingly international), mobilize financing outside the public sector and human resources outside its permanent framework and establish long-term alliances to achieve well-defined goals.
The governance crisis is not irrelevant and also needs to be addressed. Embrapa was created as a State institution, and not to serve one government or another. Its success was based on the clarity of its first leaders, to whom I pay tribute in the name of Dr. Eliseu Alves, an octogenarian, remains active, contributing lucidly to the understanding of the problems and challenges of Brazilian agriculture. For at least a decade, Embrapa invested in training its initial team of researchers, adopting a then-avant-garde policy of sending hundreds of young people to qualify in the largest and best university centers in the world, and then providing them with conditions to work, with autonomy. but with clear objectives and directions: tropicalizing the key technologies that had ensured the success of agriculture in countries with a temperate climate. Its activities and priorities were never defined by the plans of one government or another, or of one group or another, but by the greater mission that required a period of maturation incompatible with the times of mandate. And it was this long-term investment associated with clarity of objective and strategic focus that allowed Embrapa, 10 years after its creation, to begin producing results and more results, which were gradually incorporated by farmers, transforming into innovations that contributed to revolutionizing Brazilian agriculture – or at least part of it. Embrapa carried out research and generated technologies, and farmers, with support from other public policies and the private sector, transformed them into innovations. Everyone played their part, and the result was positive.
At some point in its trajectory, Embrapa began to arouse political greed, and consequently lost the political autonomy necessary to maintain itself as a State company. Its leaders, all with undeniable personal merits, were chosen due to clear political-party interference and specific interest groups. A governance similar to that of some ministries was established in the company, where each secretary is linked to a group or even a politician, to whom he responds loyally. At times there was news of directors who “didn't get along” and of disrespect towards the presidency itself. Each had an agenda, which they followed despite the veil of apparent coordination presented in well-prepared planning documents, organizational charts and flowcharts with great visual impact. The attempt to select directors through a qualified search committee, with transparent criteria, was made once and did not permeate the institutional culture.
This resulted in a “disempowerment” of Embrapa’s management, precisely in the context of increasing polarization of political debates in the country and the vision of transformations in Brazilian agriculture. Embrapa, as a research institution, has been the victim of a real internal “fla-flu”, with groups for and against agribusiness, agroecology, the market, agrarian reform, the MST, the Indians, etc. etc. And each one responds to their “boss”, who is no longer the State represented by the governing body. This results in a great dispersion of efforts and resources, shared in hundreds of researches, few with real capacity to make contributions that make a difference in the competitiveness and sustainability of Brazilian agriculture.
This fragmentation needs to be overcome. On the one hand, it is necessary, firstly, to reform the Board of Directors (Consad), which has had a merely formal role, subject entirely to what is defined within the scope of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, which does not seem to have a clear role of Embrapa for the future of Brazilian agriculture and then involves it in unproductive retail. Consad should be effectively representative of the main stakeholders of Embrapa, and as such operate as the loci debates and definition of the company's directions and priorities, with effective accountability of directors, as occurs in companies that adopt good governance practices. In this same direction, it is essential to empower the board to implement the guidelines defined by the Administrative Council, with stability in the mandate and full accountability. And in the same way, empower the units to execute the program approved by Consad and the executive board, with clear, feasible goals that can be objectively evaluated. On the other hand, it is necessary to establish a broad internal consultation and debate mechanism, aiming to overcome fragmentation and define work programs compatible with the company's priorities, and not with the researchers' ideological inclinations and personal preferences. It is not an easy task, but the company's esprit de corps, which at times finds itself threatened, indicates that it is possible.
The identity crisis is partly a reflection of the profound transformations in Brazilian agriculture, which imply new roles for companies and public institutions in general. Since the creation of Embrapa, the nature of agronomic research has changed profoundly throughout the world. The private sector, until recently secondary in key areas for agricultural innovation, gained prominence and displaced public institutions that until the end of the 80s were more prominent.
In Brazil it was no different, Embrapa lost market share in relevant markets for soybeans, corn and cotton, among other products, and this was wrongly pointed out as an indicator of loss of efficiency, etc. The problem is that Embrapa doesn't seem to know what to do in these areas, and this precisely reflects the identity crisis. If Embrapa's role continues to be the same as it was 20 years ago, when the seed market was poorly developed and did not meet the needs of farmers, and its action was fundamental to enable the expansion of agriculture in the cerrado areas, it can be said that she is not really fulfilling her role and deserves to be scolded. But is this really your role?
Embrapa has been subjected to criticism from many sectors that apparently feel undeserved and unserved by the company, a charge for which the company itself is partially responsible for promising more to society than it can actually deliver. But it also results from the politicization of the company, whose groups began to interact politically and partisanly with segments of society in search of political support, using attention to the interests and objectives of the support groups as a currency of exchange. The demands come from many sides, from the poorest and least poor family farmers, who say they are relegated to the company's programs; farmers who are part of the rural middle class, who feel exploited by multinationals and would like to be served by Embrapa to reduce costs; of large producers, who, despite being served by companies and private technical assistance, seek legitimization from Embrapa for some adopted practices; from environmentalists who demand greater focus on sustainable technologies and accuse it of being at the service of agribusiness (a term that, depending on the context and the interlocutor, can be pejorative or complimentary); representatives of forest people, organic producers and so on. And, with no clear mission or sense of priority, Embrapa has tried to respond to all demands, reinforcing the fragmentation of its action and weakening its ability to build the future, as it did in the 70s by focusing on the tropicalization of technology now available. And as it fails to meet demands, it reinforces criticism and increases the perception of the crisis beyond its real dimension.
The fact is that Embrapa has been going through a long and insensitive loss of identity, which the empirical management literature would describe as "loss of demonstrating its advantage". Every organization needs to have a clear and unambiguous objective, a well-defined scope and demonstrate its advantage over others. Embrapa lost its advantage for perhaps two decades, and used the social capital it had accumulated trying to appear to be something it no longer was. As a result, it lost its objective and scope, and is losing effectiveness.
Finding its identity and defining its priorities is a task for Embrapa itself, in internal dialogue and with society. However, as a starting point it is necessary to clarify Embrapa's positioning as a public company, which needs to be managed efficiently, but without losing its nature as a public company, which is only justified to generate products and services that cannot be provided by the private companies, guided by market logic. Embrapa's role is not to generate profit by producing seeds, nor by selling technology. This is a fallacy that needs to be unmasked, and only Embrapa can do so by exercising the humility mentioned above. Embrapa, like the universities, would not survive a month selling technology, for the simple fact that the main and most valuable assets of Embrapa and the universities are not marketable. These are knowledge assets that cannot be privately appropriated, but without which it would be impossible to produce the innovations that effectively generate transformations and development. Would it be possible for Embrapa to charge for the knowledge that made agroecological and climate risk zoning viable, one of the most important instruments for the sustainable management of Brazilian agriculture? Or sell the results of the analysis of information collected by the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR), which has been carried out by Embrapa, revealing the role of farmers in conserving the environment, removing them from the role of villain attributed to them, not always fairly? Would it be possible to charge for the hundreds of manuals on best agricultural and livestock practices, produced by Embrapa, resulting from serious research and which have enormous potential to positively impact production and productivity? Or through carbon-neutral meat technologies and integration of crops, livestock, forestry (ILPS), which are the basis of the ambitious low-carbon agriculture (ABC) plan?
Obviously I don't have any recipe for cake, but it must be said that Embrapa's role is strategic, defined here by what is relevant for the sustainable growth of Brazilian agriculture and which cannot be ensured by the private sector. Embrapa today seems to be a solution in search of problems. And there's no shortage of problems. I mention some examples that are certainly on the list of priorities, and that should be treated as such: generating technology for “neglected crops”, practiced mainly by small producers, and which do not offer market attractions for private companies; generate training and knowledge for mastering frontier technological areas, which are spreading rapidly and will be crucial for the competitiveness of Brazilian agriculture; invest in technology and knowledge to deal with the process of climate change and global warming, which could have a devastating impact on Brazil if the status quo continues; generate technologies to deal with the increasing use of agrochemicals by intensive tropical agriculture; make carbon neutral livestock farming viable; maintain and manage the germplasm bank whose strategic value is growing. And all this in the context of sustainability, which includes economic, environmental and social dimensions.
Researcher Sebastião Barbosa has just assumed the presidency for a four-year term. He has no shortage of personal qualifications. With a solid academic background, in-depth knowledge of the company, as a researcher and manager, and extensive professional experience abroad, he is more than prepared for the position. It remains to be seen whether he is and will remain empowered to face the challenges of putting Embrapa on a path that maintains it as a strategic asset of the Brazilian State. For my part, as an “Embrapian at heart” and as a Brazilian citizen, I wish you wisdom and patience to lead the process of institutional psychoanalysis that seems to be necessary to ensure future success.