Claudia Izique | FAPESP Agency – The City of Campinas will now begin, in August, the construction of a composting system to transform 200 tons of urban vegetable waste daily into organic compounds – something around 70 tons of fertilizer – which will be used in areas of the municipality and in crops from the Agronomic Institute (IAC), linked to the State Department of Agriculture and Supply, a partner in the project.
Named Reciclar Verde, the system is the first result of the Agropolo Campinas – Brazil project, supported by FAPESP within the scope of the Public Policy Research Program.
Inspired by international models – including Agropolis International, in France, and Silicon Valley, in the United States – Agropolo Campinas seeks innovative solutions in bioeconomy topics such as urban and agricultural waste; energy, nutrient and fertilizer recycling; technologies for precision agriculture; sustainable use of water; functional foods; advanced biofuels for aviation and heavy transport; and biomass for chemicals.
The undertaking brings together, in collaboration, universities, research institutes, state and municipal public authorities and the private sector with the aim of identifying strategic areas to draw up a roadmap (roadmap) that leverages the participation of the bioeconomy – a sustainable economy, based on biological resources – from the current 20% to 30% in 2025 and 40% in 2050 at a national level.
The goal is to help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, create products with high added value and increase the number and quality of formal jobs.
Campinas has historically been a center of knowledge and technology production for the agricultural sector and, more recently, also for the food and energy sectors. It therefore brings together strategic ingredients to transform the region into a bi-economy hub. “The challenge is not technical”, highlighted Sérgio Carbonell, project coordinator and director of the IAC – founded in 1887. “The challenge is to format the bioeconomy ecosystem with the concept of collaborative innovation involving several partners”, stated Carbonell.
Collaborative innovation
The project includes, in addition to the City of Campinas and IAC, representatives from the Institutes of Food Technology (Ital), Biological (IB), the State Secretariats for Economic Development, Science, Technology and Innovation and Agriculture and Supply, the University State of Campinas (Unicamp), the Techno Park technology park, in Campinas, and Agropolis Internacional, a French association focused on agronomic research and sustainable development.
These partners met at the seminar PPPBio FAPESP: Public Policies for the Development of the Bioeconomy, on August 3, at the Foundation's headquarters, in São Paulo, to take stock of the results of the first year of collective action and to define the contribution of each institution to the advancement of the project, the topic of a panel mediated by the rector of Unicamp, Marcelo Knobel.
The meeting was opened by the president of FAPESP, José Goldemberg, who recalled the success of more than 30 years of efforts to develop modern agriculture in the country. “What else can we do? Agropolo Campinas seeks an answer to this question.”
The first results – such as the creation of Reciclar Verde –, diagnoses and a preliminary menu of recommendations were presented by researchers Luiz Cortez and Gustavo Paim França, from Unicamp, and by Heitor Cantarella and Luiz Madi, respectively, from IAC and Ital, linked to the Department of Agriculture and Supply. Presentation summaries are available at http://www.fapesp.br/eventos/pppbio.
Coordinated actions
Projects of this size and ambition, which cooperatively coordinate different partners and government bodies, require coordinated action. “The State has to identify priorities or strategic areas to then qualify and support with financing and human resources”, summarized the vice-governor and secretary of Economic Development, Science, Technology and Innovation of the State of São Paulo, Márcio França.
For the Secretary of Agriculture and Supply, Arnaldo Jardim, the Agropolo experience “improves in a marked way” due to three basic characteristics. “Firstly, the topic, the bioeconomy. Second, by building this partnership that involves local authorities. And, finally, for the research institutions that promote this initiative”, he highlighted.
Initiatives like Agropolo produce results when they involve citizen participation and support from the municipal administration, said the mayor of Campinas, Jonas Donizetti. “Agropolo is an example of how cities can help. The city hall's role is to stimulate, make rules and laws that facilitate. We created very good legislation in the area of investment and for startups, laws that favor the tax area in innovation. The city hall makes things happen,” he said.
The project's prospects also excite representatives of the private sector. Jacyr da Silva Costa Filho, president of the Agribusiness Superior Council of the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (Fiesp) and director of the Brazil Division of the French group Tereos, in the agribusiness area, assessed that, especially in the bioeconomy sector, “no we need public financing; We do need to motivate investors.” Tereos is one of the controlling shareholders of the Sugarcane Technology Center (CTC), which, less than two months ago, had the commercial use of the first genetically modified sugarcane (Bt Sugarcane) approved by the National Technical Commission for Biosafety (CTNBio). ) in the world. The feat has attracted the attention of private companies, but the country has to remain alert, “Brazilian opportunities are passing”, warned Costa Filho.
The expectation is that the perspectives opened up by initiatives within the bioeconomy will also mobilize small and medium-sized companies. Ivan Hussini, technical director of Sebrae São Paulo – who, at the seminar, represented the president of Sebrae, Guilherme Afif Domingos –, highlighted that the institution has capillarity and several actions in incubators and technology parks in São Paulo. “Our objective is to develop a line of entrepreneurship that forms a chain for development.” He also recalled that the country's main competitor in this area “is in China”.
“Science-based ideas”
“Bioeconomy is a global topic”, reiterated Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, scientific director of FAPESP. “We have to have ideas based on advanced and competitive science.” He considered that the advancement of the bioeconomy depends on “business, scientific and technological” aspects and added: “FAPESP can train qualified people, maintain and stimulate research systems with global reference – and not local – and also support initiatives such as the realization of this roadmap of the bioeconomy.”
Emphasizing the importance of research for technological advancement, Brito Cruz recalled that Bt sugarcane, developed by the CTC, can be considered one of the legacies of the Sugarcane Genome project, carried out by FAPESP in 1998 in partnership with the CTC.
Along with the Agropolo Campinas project, he added, FAPESP supports other initiatives in the area of bioeconomy. The Foundation maintains programs such as Bioenergy Research (BIOEN), Biodiversity Research (BIOTA) to Climate changes, in addition to a Sustainable Chemistry Research Center, in partnership with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), for research in green chemistry based at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), an Engineering Research Center in partnership with Peugeot/Citroën , based at Unicamp, for research into biofuels, and the Center for Chemical Biology of Protein Kinases (SGC-Unicamp) for research into this molecule in agriculture, in which Aché Laboratórios Farmacêuticos also participates. “Not to mention that part of the projects of the Innovative Research in Small Businesses Program (PIPE) involves areas related to organic fertilizers, yeast quantification, pest control, among others.”
Also participating in the seminar was the director-president of FAPESP's Administrative Technical Council (CTA), Carlos Américo Pacheco.
