1 Introduction

Digitalization is changing many social spheres, from industries to human relations to political institutions. This has been happening at least since the 1980s, when personal computers, telecommunication networks, different types of digital devices, and the internet scaled up, which means that Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are far from new. Nevertheless, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, digitalization has amplified its dimensions. Emerging digital technologies, including 5G; artificial intelligence (AI); Internet of Things (IoT); virtual, augmented and mixed realities; and blockchain have been propelled by Research and Development (R&D) labs, universities, firms, and governments worldwide. As a consequence, these technologies now have a growing set of market applications, from robots within production systems to the final products arriving to customers. Such technologies have sparked regulations in several countries, in particular Western Europe, North America, and Japan. Moreover, digitalization has been merged with the biological and physical dimensions of production systems (Maynard, 2015), in a new productive paradigm so-called Industry 4.0. These developments have prompted political scientists to discuss the impacts of digitalization on diverse areas of politics.

In this setting, the opportunities borne by digitalization for environmental politics and governance have gained momentum. Some authors argue that digital technologies can be a part of the solution to the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, including climate change, ecosystems degradation, and biodiversity loss (Creutzig et al., 2022). Others have discussed experiments to “re-create nature by employing highly sophisticated technologies,” using the term “Nature 4.0” to depict a scenario in which assisted evolution, de-extinction of species, and ecological restoration would be driven by new technologies (Thiele, 2020, p. 10).

More skeptical scholars have observed that technologies such as AI can be a “game changer” in environmental sustainability but can also “amplify power differentials, epistemic violence, and misrecognition of vulnerable and minoritized groups” in environmental decision-making (Gellers, 2022, p. 1). So far, “environmental AI” has been used to enhance productivity and profit in global value chains (GVCs), not for a sustainability transformation (Dauvergne, 2022). Clapp and Ruder (2020) signal the double-edged nature and uneven power relations of precision technologies for agriculture, thus hampering instead of supporting a social transformation toward sustainable agriculture.

Optimists, on the other hand, state that agriculture 4.0 has the potential to improve global environmental governance. According to the FAO (2022), digital technologies can help farmers gather, store, analyze, and share agricultural data through smartphones, enabling access to mobile banking, satellites that provide updated weather reports, and drones that allow for detailed aerial imagery. These practices can promote sustainable rural development, via direct contact and trust between rural producers and urban consumers, potentially reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers. There is also potential to increase family farming through digitalized agriculture, incentivizing small-scale and organic agriculture.

Although these practices are more common in developed countries, digital farming is growing in middle-income countries. Brazil is the largest country in terms of arable land, a top 5 producer of 34 agricultural commodities, and the largest agricultural net exporter in the world (Valdes, 2022, p. 1). Digital farming might help improve productivity thus consolidating Brazil’s position as a top agricultural exporter. Since 2005, the country has changed from an exporter of mainly tropical agricultural products (coffee, sugar, citrus, and cacao) to a global supplier of commodities, including soybeans, grains, cotton, ethanol, and meats (Valdes, 2022). Growing portions of the country’s land are devoted to agriculture. This means that agriculture in Brazil represents severe environmental impacts (e.g., deforestation, excessive use of water, soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, changes in the nitrogen cycle, etc.) when not managed sustainably (Viola & Franchini, 2018). To cope with the challenge, Agriculture 4.0 could become a new productive paradigm, potentially enhancing productivity while also propelling sustainability across agricultural value chains. However, thus far there is little research investigating if Agriculture 4.0 is indeed a positive driver for environmental sustainability in Brazil (Viola & Mendes, 2022).

In order to contribute to this debate, we analyze recent developments in Agriculture 4.0 in Brazil, to illuminate how it has impacted sustainability governance. Our analysis is backed by political economy and global environmental governance literature. Empirically, we draw our insights from government reports, policy papers from the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa); the National Food Supply Company (Conab); the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply (MAPA); and the Ministry of the Environment (MMA), besides gray literature from think tanks, newspapers, NGOs, and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Our argument is both empirically informed and critical of Agriculture 4.0 when used to improve productivity but disassociated from socio-environmental sustainability (Inoue & Franchini, 2020).

The chapter has four parts besides this introduction. The next outlines the challenges of environmental governance in the Anthropocene and their relationships with agriculture. The following section introduces the characteristics and risks of Agriculture 4.0. The subsequent section presents the case of Brazil and is followed by the conclusion.

2 Environmental Challenges in the Anthropocene: Theoretical Perspectives

Global environmental challenges have become more intricate in the Anthropocene. Planet Earth has biophysical thresholds that can lead to disastrous consequences if transgressed. This is the diagnosis of Rockström et al. (2009), who find that biodiversity loss, changes in the global nitrogen cycle, and climate change are planetary boundaries (PB) that have already been outpaced or are headed toward exceeding the planet’s support system (in the case of climate change). An updated version of that influential paper found that two of the PBs—climate change and biosphere integrity (which includes biodiversity loss)—are “core” because they play a fundamental role in the planet’s equilibrium. “Climate change affects the net energy balance of the Earth’s surface, whereas biosphere regulates material and energy flows in the Earth System and increases its resilience to abrupt and gradual change” (Steffen et al., 2015, p. 736). These papers have set the stage for considering the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch in which our planet is dangerously threatened by anthropogenic activities.

One such activity is agriculture. Environmental changes in the nitrogen cycle are driven mainly by modern agricultural processes, including cattle raising and the manufacturing of fertilizers, which end up contaminating the soil and water systems. At the planetary scale, the “additional amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus activated by humans are now so large that they significantly disturb the global cycles of these elements” (Rockström et al., 2009, p. 473). Besides disturbing the nitrogen cycle, modern industrial agriculture has contributed to the concentration of lands in the hands of medium and large farmers to the detriment of small farmers; the compacting and impermeabilization of soils due to the extensive use of heavy agricultural machinery; the erosion of lands in agricultural countries; the contamination of water, food, and animals with fertilizers and/or pesticides; the removal of the native vegetation cover from extensive continuous areas; and the silting up of rivers and reservoirs, among other consequences (Viola & Mendes, 2022).

These challenges suggest that a sustainability transformation in agriculture is urgently needed. This has become one of the main challenges of contemporary global environmental governance. Yet, there is a dissonance as regards how to promote sustainability in agriculture. Some theoretical perspectives focus on economic growth (not development) and the never-ending profitability of corporations, adopting the discourse of sustainability as an emergent (but not central) dynamic of the contemporary global economy. Scholars of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)—including its contemporary adaptation into Environment, Social, Governance—and mainstream political economists fit into this group. Other perspectives are considerably more critical of current capitalism, opting to put the environment center stage in their analyses. The scholarly network Earth System Governance (ESG) is the best representative of this line of thinking, inasmuch as it proposes a deep transformation in global environmental governance. In between, there are several scholarly traditions, including critical political economy, varieties of green capitalism, food security, and international cooperation scholars, offering different nuances for the role of agriculture in tackling/contributing to global environmental hazards. In the following lines, we briefly outline these perspectives. Figure 11.1 exhibits these bodies of literature according to their closer affinity: the environment or the economy/business.

Fig. 11.1
A sectioned triangle diagram. From top to bottom, each section is labeled Earth System Governance, Critical Political Economy of the Environment, Sustainability Transitions, and Corporate Social Responsibility. The tip of the triangle is labeled environment, and the base is business, or economy.

Contemporary literature on the political economy of environmental governance

Full size image

With a focus on the continuous profitability of firms and economic growth, most CSR scholars discuss how firms adapt to certain societal demands such as environmental protection, philanthropic initiatives, human rights, and social services, as long as these activities do not interfere in their core business. More often than not, however, CSR ends up contributing little to solving the problems of environmental governance. For instance, CSR interventions in African agribusiness aim (but often fails) to improve capacity building, economic development, and the provision of rural infrastructure, while environmental concerns and solutions to structural poverty remain secondary. Even when CSR has recorded some success in agricultural development, it has undermined equality, particularly in Africa, where women’s agricultural productivity is hindered by unequal access to resources and land (Uduji et al., 2019). Yet, a few CSR accounts propose to reinterpret agricultural modernization for development (in Africa, Asia, and Latin America) differently from the Western agro-industrial tradition, which has caused a myriad of environmental problems. A new agricultural pattern would entail ethical responsiveness and moral respect for sustainability, which should be incorporated into the economic and legal systems of producer and buyer countries (Olde & Valentinov, 2019).

Mainstream political economists of the environment usually adopt the lenses of Global Value Chain (GVC) theory to investigate how global industrial output can become more sustainable and improve labor conditions across the production and consumption life cycle. This literature includes studies in coffee, wine, beef, soy, and other commodity chains typical in the Global South (Ponte, 2019, 2020; Lee et al., 2012). Accordingly, the industrialization of agriculture in developing and poor countries could help these countries upgrade their social and economic status. Although these scholars are not against stricter environmental regulation, their perception is that the growth in global agricultural chains, commodity trade, and agro-industrial modernization in developing countries must go hand in hand with only some aspects of environmental protection, frequently overlooking the necessary transformations for truly addressing the environmental challenges of the Anthropocene, which often require a contraction, not growth, in GVCs. See, for instance, the approach of degrowth proposed by Schneider et al. (2010).

Another approach in environmental governance is food security, as a driver for international cooperation and foreign aid, aiming at human rights protection and sustainable development in recipient countries. This literature usually stems from International Relations (IR), analyzing how IOs promote cooperation projects for sustainable agriculture and food security in developing countries. Agri-food sovereignty can help stabilize biodiverse farming, by incentivizing family farming while protecting ecosystems and providing rural jobs/development. Yet, traditional practices of industrialized countries might end up using the umbrella term “environmental governance” to legitimize agro-exploratory and unequal extractive regimes or agro-industrial practices that negatively affect the environment, particularly in regions with problematic regulatory enforcement (McMichael, 2011). International cooperation for sustainable agriculture in Brazil has been proposed in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement, including forest monitoring systems, biofuels capacity-building and technology transfer, low carbon and resilient agriculture, and management of protected areas (Hochstetler & Inoue, 2019). However, more research is needed in order to evaluate international cooperation projects’ impacts on sustainable agriculture in Brazil.

Two other approaches are somehow midway between protecting the environment and economic development. First, varieties of green capitalism (VoGC), a branch of literature coming from the now classic approach of varieties of capitalism (VoC), introduced by Hall and Soskice (2001). VoGC scholars use historical institutionalism and comparative political methods to examine how novel approaches to sustainable development, such as the “Green Economy” and “Green New Deal,” are propelled by the state. The wider theoretical perspective of “state capitalism” has also examined issues such as decarbonizing states (Alami & Dixon, 2020). Other models of “greenness” have been proposed to tackle the climate and ecological crises, involving policy mixes and different levels of state regulation of the economy (Tienhaara, 2014). Yet, alternative socio-ecological possibilities and the rising demands for environmental justice, racial and gender equality, and democratic commons are still absent in VoGC analyses (Kenis & Matthias, 2015). Niederle (2018) is one of the few to use the VoGC approach to discuss socio-ecological orders in Brazilian agriculture.

Second, sustainability transitions (STs) are an approach inaugurated by Management and Science & Technology Studies scholars. STs aim to conceptualize deep societal, cultural, economic, and institutional transitions toward sustainable practices in domains such as energy, natural resource and biodiversity use, agriculture, water, and mobility (Loorbach et al., 2017). Some frameworks have been developed regarding a transition in agri-food systems, such as the Multilevel Perspective for sustainable farming and good agricultural practices like organic food production (Medaets et al., 2020). Policy mixes, socio-technical regimes, and comparative institutional frameworks (e.g., triple-helix and 5-helix) apply to sustainable agriculture. Transitions, however, are considered naturally slow processes, thus insufficient for the transformative environmental governance needed in the Anthropocene.

Others recognize the environment as the most fundamental dimension, whose protection should become a priority in market, state, and social decision-making. In this chapter, our analytical perspective is closer to these viewpoints, which involve both critical political economists and Earth System Governance (ESG)Footnote 1 scholars. Critical political economists of the environment problematize socioeconomic inequality, injustice, racism, gender bias, and human rights risks of contemporary production systems in their environmental critiques (Clapp & Ruder, 2020; Kaijser & Kronsell, 2014; Clapp & Dauvergne, 2011). These scholars have a considerable sensibility to the particularities of developing countries and, increasingly, to the agency (or a lack thereof) of vulnerable populations such as women, indigenous peoples, small farmers, and rural communities in environmental decision-making (Neville & Dauvergne, 2012). Although these scholars provide important criticisms of the current capitalist economic model, they are usually shy to propose solutions to the problem. Even so, critical political economists are among the scholars most sensible to environmental transformations, only behind ESG scholars.

The Earth System Governance (ESG) science-policy network adopts a transformative environmental approach to rethinking solutions to the challenges of the Anthropocene. Their analyses are usually normative, aiming to influence global environmental policy-making. Accordingly, transformative environmental governance in agriculture must be plural, recognizing non-anthropocentric perspectives such as the rights of the Earth, animal rights, and plural values in global biodiversity, climate, and ecological governance (Visseren-Hamakers & Kok, 2022; Biermann et al., 2012). Equipped with the analytical sensibility of critical political economists and ESG scholars, following we problematize Agriculture 4.0 and its developments in Brazil.

3 Beyond Technocentrism: Agriculture 4.0 as a Gradual Transformation

Agriculture 4.0 is the fourth historical phase in agriculture’s evolutionary stages so far. First, agriculture 1.0 involved heavy human labor and the use of rustic mechanical machines of low technological intensity aiming to produce small to medium volumes of crops, typical of agroeconomic development until the mid-twentieth century. Following emerged agriculture 2.0, which involved the so-called green revolution. This second phase was characterized by the use of mid-intensity technology in agriculture during the 1950s–1980s, such as chemical fertilizers, agrochemicals, controlled water supply, and new methods of cultivation, with intense mechanization. Since the 1980s, however, agriculture has entered its third phase: agriculture 3.0. In this stage, electronics and information systems were incorporated into agricultural practices through the use of software, the internet, and information systems in crop management. More recently, agriculture advanced to its newest phase: Agriculture 4.0. Some scholars argue that this has been happening since the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the following lines, we trace the contours of this new paradigm, defending the hypothesis that Agriculture 4.0 will advance gradually, not disruptively, especially in developing countries such as Brazil.

We consider the terms digital farming, precision agriculture/farming, smart farming, and Agriculture 4.0 interchangeably, in line with Liu et al. (2021). Essentially, digital farming “connects farm equipment to software platforms that track on-farm data and enable analyses of soil and climate conditions in specific locations in order to provide farmers with advice regarding seed choice and more precise application of pesticides and fertilizers” (Clapp & Ruder, 2020, p. 49). Others claim that digital farming is “the use of technology by farmers to integrate financial and field-level records for complete farm activity management” (Cropin, 2022), or, still, a fusion of emerging technologies such as “Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and blockchain” to develop “sustainable and intelligent industrial agriculture […] through real-time variable fine-grained collection, processing, and analyzing of spatio-temporal data” providing “real-time farm management, a high degree of automation, and data-driven intelligent decision-making” (Liu et al., 2021, p. 2).

How has this new paradigm been applied in agri-food production systems globally and in Brazil? And, more importantly, what are the environmental implications of Agriculture 4.0 technologies?

Some authors adopt a technocentric logic to Agriculture 4.0. Massruhá and Leite (2017) observed that (1) Agriculture 4.0 is “already a reality” in Brazil but (2) neglected the potentially negative effects of Agro 4.0 for environmental sustainability. These authors use Embrapa as a case study of the successful use of technology in Brazilian agriculture. We do not question the relevance of Embrapa in developing technologies to strengthen Brazil’s agriculture. However, these authors paint a picture that still does not exist and might take several decades to become a reality. For example, the wide application of AI, blockchain, and IoT in Brazilian agriculture. The democratization of Agriculture 4.0, including small-family farmers, will take time and will likely happen progressively, but slowly (Viola & Mendes, 2022). The particularities of Brazil’s agribusiness are useful, so we can understand this pattern.

Agriculture 4.0 will advance slowly in the country because of the high heterogeneity within Brazil’s agricultural system. The country has hi-tech agribusiness groups, well equipped to adapt to Agriculture 4.0, but the majority of the workers in the sector are small farmers, with low economic resources and practically no technology access (concentrated in the Northeast and North regions). However, family farming located in the South and Southeast regions is often more capitalized, and utilizes predominantly technologies from Agriculture 2.0. The less privileged portion of the Brazilian agricultural community will need time and adequate public policies and investments to adapt to digitalization. Thus, equity and socioeconomic justice is a sensitive issue in the use of Agriculture 4.0 to improve environmental governance. Sustainable Agriculture 4.0 in Brazil faces many challenges, for instance, regarding big data and analytics, AI, IoT, digital literacy, and blockchain. Following, we discuss linkages between each of these technological dimensions and sustainability in Brazilian agriculture.

Big Data and Analytics aim at providing detailed information on agrotechnical systems. Related environmental challenges include (a) risks of low transparency in data acquisition and analysis, which can result in collecting large volumes of data without user’s consent, a particularly challenging issue in poorly educated rural communities and (b) shortage of data analysts in the country (also an international trend), including in the agricultural sector (Mendes, 2021). Research on the use of AI to improve sustainability governance is growing (Dauvergne, 2022), revealing hindrances for environmental AI, such as (a) few start-ups developing AI innovations applied to sustainable agriculture, a problem related to the shortage of ICT professionals in Brazil; (b) the urgency of ICT public policies regarding environmental impacts, data protection, cybersecurity, and regulation congruent with the principles of transparency, justice, and equity in algorithm development; and (c) transparency with unions and protection of workers regarding the risks of job automation and job losses in the agribusiness industry due to digitalization.

The use of digital devices in physical infrastructures in farm management is usually associated with IoT. Challenges for environmental uses of IoT include (a) risk of dependency on imported digital devices and smart agro-industrial software from foreign firms, which may have access to confidential data from Brazil’s agri-food systems, and (b) high cost of IoT devices (e.g., drones, extensive computer networks), which end up being available mainly to agro-industrial conglomerates that can bear the costs of financial investments.

Another set of technologies is associated with cybersecurity, and normally used in banking systems is blockchain. Several challenges exist for the environmental use of this technology, such as (a) the problem of interoperability among the several platforms that might develop applications from smart farming using different programming languages, protocol stacks, and security mechanisms; (b) high energy consumption, due to the complex consensus mechanisms in transactions validation; and (c) cybersecurity, as blockchain has become a target for hackers globally, who can easily launch cyberattacks (see Liu et al., 2021, p. 10).

Some of these challenges are associated with education and cultural dissemination of ICTs and, thus, linked to digital literacy. The lack of tech education represents environmental challenges, such as (a) shortage of higher education professionals in ICT-related areas, which is a barrier to the development of environmental (agro) smart technologies, and (b) urgency to tackle the digital divide in smart farming, considering, on one side, family farmers with low or no formal education, but also agro-industrialized firms managed with high technical standards.

When it comes to the environmental impact of digital technologies, we agree with Barnards et al. (2020, p. 528) that “policy-making and broader public discussion over the integration of emerging technologies such as AI, big data, and blockchain into global sustainability governance need to be far more socially and politically sensitive than is currently the case.” Accordingly, Agriculture 4.0 as a driver of environmental governance in Brazil should be more than a new modality of “agtech” propelled by profit-seeking private groups. Civil society, government, and academia must be included in the development, public policy formulation, decision-making, and adoption of agriculture 4.0. Yet, several challenges hinder participative environmental governance in Brazilian agriculture.

First, the need for a realistic evaluation of the potential of Agriculture 4.0 for sustainability. A growing literature discusses the potential of new agriculture technologies, particularly to enhance productivity (Liu et al., 2021; Massruhá & Leite, 2017), but we need long-term analyses (which will only be possible after years of the introduction of Agriculture 4.0) to evaluate the true environmental impact of Agriculture 4.0. On top of that, few social scientists (Clapp & Ruder, 2020; Dauvergne, 2022) have investigated this topic, which is dominated by mainstream political economists and agricultural engineers. Thus, the socio-environmental long-term impacts of Agriculture 4.0 in Brazil need to become explicit in order to guarantee more room for justice and equity in agro-environmental governance.

Second, attention should be dedicated to the new distribution of power triggered by the adoption of the emerging technologies of Agriculture 4.0. Agtech firms and data consulting companies will enhance their power in agriculture value chains. On the flip side, logistics firms, small farms, and vulnerable agriculture workers might take time to adapt to digitalization and will progressively lose knowledge power as regards agriculture. How do these power shifts impact environmental practices in agriculture? Are tech-driven firms concerned with environmental issues, or mainly with profits? According to Mendes (2022), as the “business of the environment” has gained momentum in the contemporary economy, Big tech firms have incorporated the environment into their business models, often as a greenwash mechanism for profit making. Thus, power might likely shift from traditional agriculture firms to tech firms, but probably not to environmentally concerned groups.

Third, tensions exist between standardized accounting practices (e.g., the use of excessive and sometimes unnecessary indicators) and local participation in environmental governance related to Agriculture 4.0. Digitalization emerges with a concomitant rise of private, voluntary codes and standards in environmental governance. In this setting, “experimentalist modes of decision-making that may extend standardized accounting practices and calculative rationales across diverse forms of sustainability governance might do so at the cost of local spaces and practices, resulting in the prioritization of short-term profit maximization and financial markets’ agendas over longer-term sustainability needs” (Barnards et al., 2020, p. 529). Accordingly, digitalization might enhance “traceability” and due diligence in agricultural value chains, but not necessarily more transparency and participative decision-making in environmental governance.

In sum, proponents of Agriculture 4.0 highlight its potential benefits, usually with respect to improving productivity and resource efficiency. However, we argue that Agriculture 4.0 might require stricter regulatory control because it can result in detrimental social and environmental side effects. Moreover, these technologies might further concentrate power in the hands of powerful corporate actors in ways that undermine rural workers’ and small farmers’ participation in decision-making. More critical scholars advocate for an entirely different technological system based on agroecological principles to achieve the goal of sustainable agriculture (Clapp & Ruder, 2020). This means that the social and political dimensions of digital agriculture reveal a far less promising scenario for environmental sustainability.

4 Agriculture 4.0 in Brazil: Institutions, Agendas, and the Challenges of Environmental Governance

In this section, we depict relevant dimensions of the decision-making arenas, motivations of interest groups, and the role of the state as both an actor and a structure (Pierson & Skocpol, 2002) in the complex introduction of Agriculture 4.0 in Brazil. Following, we provide insights on how Agriculture 4.0 can help strengthen environmental governance but also problematize the current agribusiness paradigm that privileges accumulation and growth instead of socio-environmental sustainability, thus hampering the environmental potential of digital agriculture.

4.1 Environmental and Institutional Stakeholders of Brazilian Agriculture

How do political institutions constrain and influence the behavior of agribusiness groups towards environmental protection in Brazil? Do Brazilian governmental bodies such as the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa); the National Food Supply Company (Conab); the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply (MAPA); and the Ministry of the Environment (MMA) propel or hamper sustainability in agriculture? What are the political and economic vectors propelling Agriculture 4.0? Are market actors and political forces driving transformative environmental governance through Agriculture 4.0 in Brazil?

Broadly, Brazil’s environmental/agricultural information system is composed of SISNAMA (National Environmental System), SINIMA (National System of Information on the Environment), CAR (Rural Environmental Registry), and the National Rural Environmental Registry System (SICAR). SISNAMA is the set of public bodies (of the Union, states, municipalities, Federal District and territories, as well as NGOs) responsible for the protection of the environment in Brazil, composed of a superior body (Government Council), a consultive body (CONAMA), the central body (MMA), executive organs (IBAMA, ICMBio), states and municipalities. SINIMA is the information policy system of the MMA, a platform based on the integration and sharing of information between the various subsystems. CAR is an electronic public record of national scope, mandatory for all rural properties, with the purpose of integrating the environmental information of rural properties and Permanent Preservation Areas (Áreas de Preservação Permanente, APP). SICAR was created in 2012 as a nationwide electronic system for the integration and management of environmental information on rural properties across the country.

Since 1972, Brazil has had a specialized agriculture state company called Embrapa, linked to MAPA. Embrapa aims to support Brazilian agriculture with scientific research. The company has an agency specifically dedicated to Information Technology (Ageitec) that has been developing ICT systems and software for use in basic research and for agro-industrial applications. Throughout recent decades, this has contributed to increasing productivity but also to improving agriculture’s environmental sustainability. Ageitec has developed systems such as the Interactive System to Support Environmental Licensing (Sistema Interativo de Suporte ao Licenciamento Ambiental – SISLA), the Interactive System for Geospatial Analysis of the Legal Amazon (Sistema Interativo de Análise Geoespacial da Amazônia Legal – SiaGeo), and the Temporal Analysis of Vegetation System (Sistema de Análise Temporal da Vegetação – SATVeg). Importantly, these systems were developed and institutionalized within Embrapa so were not subject to changes in the executive branch of government.

Alongside Embrapa, Conab is a public company also linked to MAPA and founded in 1990. While Embrapa is dedicated to scientific research, Conab concentrates on food supply, family farming, storage of grains, agricultural information, and the Minimum Price Guarantee Policy (PGPM-Bio) for rural and forest workers. PGPM-Bio is a policy aimed at extractive, agro-extractive, and forestry populations; agrarian reform settlers; aquaculture farmers; artisanal fishermen; indigenous people; members of remaining quilombola communities; family farmers; and other traditional forest peoples, with practical knowledge that contributes to sustainable management and use of local biodiversity. PGPM-Bio guarantees a minimum price for 17 non-timber extractive products, that is, agricultural workers are reimbursed the difference between the market prices and the selling price of a set of forest products including açaí, andiroba, babassu, extractive rubber, buriti, cocoa, Brazil nuts, and others. PGPMBio was introduced as an adjustment to Law No. 11,775 (from 2008), which introduced an amendment to Law No. 8427 (from 1992). Thus, this is a relevant sustainable development policy that remains embedded in Conab since the 1990s, despite the changes in federal governments.

This means that, at least as regards environmental software developed by Embrapa and the environmental policy PGPM-Bio implemented by Conab, these public companies can to some extent shield environmental instruments from changes in the federal government, for instance, anti-environmental changes like those promoted during Bolsonaro’s administration. However, this scenario changes considerably when we talk about MAPA and MMA, federal ministries more subject to the political preferences of the executive.

MMA has been an environmentally friendly ministry, although this changed during Bolsonaro’s presidency. MAPA, on the other hand, has historically promoted agribusiness interests and privileged rural elites in Brazil. There is a difficulty for traditional developmentalists to assimilate concerns about environmental protection in the country. Araújo (2013, p. 388) diagnosed that in the formulation of the New Forest Code, introduced by Law N. 2.651 (from 2012), parliamentarians from the Ruralist Caucus (Bancada Ruralista), the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA) and related organizations, as well as from MAPA itself, expressed opposition to most environmental policy tools. When such policies were assimilated to some extent, those powerful actors tended to read them with alterations or even inversion of concepts. The ecological economic zoning (ZEE), for instance, was framed as a mapping of the places that could be occupied without restrictions. As regards civil society’s participation in MMA, Abers and Oliveira (2015) found a decrease, over the period 2003–2013, in appointments of actors originating from social movements, accompanied by an increase in appointments of public servants in this ministry. The authors suggest that such a change was not only the result of transformations in the political preferences of the Worker’s Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) government. It resulted from an increase in the absolute number of public servants in Brazil, which made the government less dependent than it was in the past on the technical and political capacities present in civil society.

So, although the MMA has suffered disruptive inflections as regards environmental protection, such as from Lula (ex-president of Brazil, and reelected in 2022) to the government of Bolsonaro, and even considering the conservative nature of MAPA, some environmental initiatives and policies promoted by Embrapa and Conab remained relatively unaltered in these last two decades. To some extent, the institutional framework of Embrapa and Conab provided a shield to the anti-environmental guidelines of Bolsonaro, which we will discuss at the end of this section.

Additional institutions are relevant in the Brazilian agricultural landscape. The Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA), which included political and rural associations and leaders, and the National Monetary Council (CMN), Banco do Brasil, and BNDES, provide the main credit lines for agricultural entrepreneurs. Environmental institutes linked to MMA, in particular, the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), are central and were considerably weakened in Bolsonaro’s administration.

More recently, an agricultural ethos has permeated the debate on the internationalization of the Brazilian economy, particularly since the second decade of the twenty-first century. It resulted in a proliferation of think tanks, agriculture courses in business schools, and the incorporation of agribusiness discussions in several arenas previously uninterested in this sector. The globalization of Brazilian agribusiness (Søndergaard, 2020) was heavily supported by the Brazilian state but also by a series of civil society and, particularly, market actors which became gradually more involved in the sector. Concomitantly, it became more salient to the public opinion that agriculture and commodity production and trade contribute heavily to deforestation, biodiversity loss and climate change in Brazil. “The growing demand of agricultural and forest products by US and European consumers is responsible for 7 and 16 percent, respectively, of deforestation associated with international trade” (Rajão, 2022). As a result, four segments emerged within the Brazilian agribusiness elite. In this classification, which we borrow from FASE (2022, p. 10–14), we do not include family farming and small rural entrepreneurs.

First, pragmatic-reformists. This segment includes the Brazilian Association of Agribusiness (ABAG), the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable Development (CEBDS), and the Brazilian Tree Industry (IBÁ). The group is led by ABAG and aligned around the Coalition Brazil, Climate, Forests and Agriculture (founded in 2015) that engages actors from firms, the financial sector, academia, and civil society. Pragmatic-reformists defend the end of illegal deforestation, the reduction of emissions, and the strengthening of funding for crop, livestock, and forestry integration and the ABC+ Plan (Viola & Mendes, 2022), and it is contrary to bills favoring land grabbing. On more controversial issues, such as the time frame for the demarcation of indigenous lands, they tend to be evasive.

Second, pragmatic-ideological. This includes the CNA, Brazilian Rural Society (SRB), the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (Abiove), the Brazilian Association of Cotton Producers (Abrapa), Crop Life Brasil, the National Association of Cotton Exporters (ANEA), and National Association of Citrus Exporters (CitrusBR). This group is led by CNA and SRB and supports compliance with the Forest Code and the adoption of new technologies as “good sustainable practices.” Furthermore, it is against illegal deforestation, which group members consider detrimental to international trade, in particular to the EU-Mercosur agreement.

Third, denialist-ideological. This group is composed of the Brazilian Association of Soy Producers (APROSOJA) and the Brazilian Association of Beef Exporters (ABIEC). As regards interests and agendas, they are strong supporters of former President, Jair Bolsonaro, while denying the recent high rates of deforestation. In addition to the absence of dialogue with civil society, they seek to ratify their own vision by sponsoring studies of a denialist bias in relation to climate change, reinforcing old developmentalist ideals about the power of Brazilian agriculture.

Fourth, thematic focus. This final segment includes the Union of the Sugarcane Industry (UNICA) and the Brazilian Animal Protein Association (ABPA). It is mobilized around specific agendas for sectors such as sugar energy and poultry/pig farming, including decarbonization or methane emissions credits, with a low level of involvement with other actors involved in the climate agenda. As a world leader in the biofuels agenda, Brazil has become one of the main centers for the development of policies in the sector, which places UNICA in an important position in relation to other agribusiness actors. UNICA is the only organization among the associations listed above to speak openly about decarbonization policies. On the other hand, ABPA relies, to a large extent, on the allegation that poultry and pig farming do not represent a significant volume of emissions, being thus less active in the climate agenda. Yet, ABPA is in favor of a reduction in methane emissions.

During the Bolsonaro administration (2018–2022), all major environmental institutions in Brazil were weakened (Adams et al., 2020, pp. 3–8). In 2019, the government changed the institutional arrangement of the Amazon Fund (FA), through the extinction of the Committee Advisor of the Amazon Fund (COFA) and the Technical Committee of the Amazon Fund (CTFA). Federal Decree No. 10,084/2019 revoked the restrictions expansion of sugarcane planting areas of sugar in the Amazon, in the Pantanal, and in Upper Paraguay Basin, putting at risk extensive areas of the Cerrado and Amazon biomes. Moreover, Bill No. 191/2020 authorized mining, tourism, livestock, and the exploitation of water resources and hydrocarbons in indigenous lands. Since the extinction of the Ministry of Development (MDA), in 2016, public policies focused on family farming, structured between 2003 and 2016, were progressively weakened, and the investments toward ecological agriculture and organic production have been marginalized on the agenda of agricultural policy. This is the case of the National Agroecology Policy and Organic Production (PNAPO) instituted by Decree No. 7794/2012, which resulted from a long construction process between the government and civil society. The budget allocated to PNAPO has been progressively reduced.

4.2 Incipient Digitalization and Environmental Issues in Brazilian Agribusiness

A project funded by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) promises to revamp sugarcane production in Brazil. Researchers developed a new technique to use AI to create efficient models of genomic selection of sugarcane, capable of predicting the performance in the field from the DNA. With the new technique, it is possible to predict what the performance of these plants will be even before they grow. In traditional breeding, the lab process takes 9–12 years and is very expensive. The new AI methodology improves the predictive capacity by 50% besides saving much time (Muniz, 2022).

This example illustrates the potential of Agriculture 4.0, especially if supported by prominent research institutions such as FAPESP. Yet, as the example also demonstrates, the new AI technique aims to improve productivity, not to reduce the environmental impacts of sugarcane production, which are many (e.g., soil acidification, pollution of aquatic systems from waste and pesticides, etc.). This is a characteristic of the current status of Agriculture 4.0 in Brazil: the potentially negative sustainability outcomes are neglected, and the use of these technologies to reduce agriculture’s environmental impacts is far from being a priority. In fact, this is in line with the findings of O’Malley et al. (2020) that climate-smart agriculture supports the status quo of industrial food systems.

Digital agriculture in Brazil is advancing through the use of Apps developed by Agtechs (start-up firms with focus on agriculture). Apps in smart agriculture have five main functionalities: management and planning; irrigation with remote equipment and monitoring; biological controls and processes, featuring pest control, planting methods, and fertilizer applications; access to information on agricultural prices in national and international markets; and commercialization (marketplace) (Buainain et al., 2021; Viola & Mendes, 2022).

Despite Agriculture 4.0 technologies being applied mostly to improve productivity, some recent initiatives in Brazil use smart technologies as a sustainability driver. The National Plan on Low-Carbon Agriculture (Plano Nacional para Agricultura de Baixo-Carbono – Plano ABC) foresees a reduction of between 133.9 and 162.1 Mt CO2e in agriculture’s annual emissions through an intensification of sustainable livestock raising and low-carbon productive systems, considered climate-smart technologies. The plan prioritizes the recovery of degraded pastures, crop-livestock-forest integration, as well as agro-forest systems, no-till farming, biological nitrogen fixation, and enhanced agricultural efficiency. Moreover, artificial neural networks are applied to calculate the optimum size of plantation areas and forecast Brazilian soy harvests. Apps such as BovChain manage socio-environmental parameters via big data and cloud computing. In this case, smartphones connect farmers, slaughterhouses, buyers, and investors so that the herds and commercial transactions can be monitored in real time, within a common digital market which, ideally, would facilitate accountability and environmental management of the agricultural and livestock production chains. Brazil is also well advanced in precision agriculture, applied in satellite monitoring and computational visualization of crops and herds, smart irrigation, and the optimization of agrochemicals use. Agrosmart is a Brazilian platform that seeks to reduce environmental impacts and enhance crop performance (Viola & Mendes, 2022).

Embrapa recommends some techniques to increment agricultural sustainability. The no-till farming system, for example, is climate-positive insofar as it mitigates emissions of N2O, a gas with a greenhouse effect 340 times higher than CO2e. Yet, no-till farming can be harmful to human and animal health when it is associated with the use of glyphosate, a herbicide with carcinogenic potential and destructive to the intestinal microbiota (Gill et al., 2018).

Digital technologies have also been applied in the management of the Amazon. Such technologies have been used in more frequent environmental inspections; forest administration methods that integrate public policies and private governance; and intensification of agribusiness in smaller, more productive land areas as a way of controlling the expansion of the agricultural frontier. More recently, Agriculture 4.0 technologies in Brazil include biomimetic innovations emulating natural formations and Amazonian processes and ecosystems, as well as biomaterials, such as biomechanical sensors inserted into the forest functional processes through artificial intelligence and robotics (Nobre et al., 2016).

Software for environmental management has also been advanced in Brazil. Agritempo, for instance, provides the necessary information for the Agricultural Climatic Risk Zoning (Zarc), which is an instrument for agricultural policy and risk management. The system is designed to minimize the risks related to agricultural losses resulting from climatic events and allows each Brazilian municipality to identify the best epochs to plant crops, in different types of soil and grain cycles. Agrotic is another such platform, aiming to support technological prospection studies for agriculture, considering research demands and market opportunities integrating agricultural innovation with the public and private segments. Furthermore, sitIoT is an initiative between Embrapa Digital Agriculture and Embrapa Environment to provide a platform for running experiments involving IoT devices in the field (Masshurá & Leite, 2017).

Agricultural cooperatives and Technical Assistance Rural Extension Companies (EMATER) have also been fundamental for the dissemination of technology in the Brazilian countryside. Cooperatives are important intermediaries for the dissemination of digital technologies for small family farmers, particularly those operating in the North and Northeastern Brazil. Cooperatives have been introducing digital technologies in areas of improvement in soil preparation, cultivation, harvesting, and postharvesting. EMATER aims to contribute to increasing the productivity of rural producers, especially small- and medium-sized ones, who face financial and economic restrictions on contracting private services. With the entry of digital technologies in the agricultural sector, EMATERs have sought to adapt to digitalization but aiming to increase agriculture productivity. Applications range from the forms of relationship and contact between producers and agricultural technicians to the use of technology in the field.

5 Final Remarks

In this chapter, we have presented recent developments in Agriculture 4.0 in Brazil, discussing its potential and challenges for improving environmental governance. Through an initial mapping of some theories on the political economy of environmental governance, we have positioned our analysis between critical political economy and Earth System Governance scholarship. We mapped the institutional framework of actors and agendas involved in Agriculture 4.0, as well as their environmental consequences. This empirical effort brings us closer to the analyses of institutionalist political economists, interested in the dynamics that occur within the state, considered both an agent and a structure, from which stem the guidelines of environmental and agricultural policies in Brazil. We also presented and discussed the introduction of some agriculture apps and digital technologies in the country. Despite the limitation of sources, as little empirical research on Agriculture 4.0 has been carried out to date in Brazil, we developed our analysis based on research that we have been carrying out since 2020 (see Viola & Mendes, 2022), in addition to secondary literature. The chapter thus demonstrates that these technologies have been expanding in the country. However, Agriculture 4.0 applications for environmental and sustainability governance are still incipient in Brazil.

Some potential changes are expected to be introduced by the Lula administration from January 2023. The platform of the victorious democratic coalition in the areas of environment, climate, and agriculture emphasizes low-carbon agriculture, environmental protection, reducing the use of agrochemicals, putting an end to deforestation in the Amazon and other biomes, food security, and public support for family farming, particularly the segment of subsistence agriculture, which is predominant in the Northeast and North regions of Brazil. Beyond that, Brazil is the country with the highest potential for carbon sequestration – through reforestation and afforestation – in the world, because of its vast tropical territory with its high level of insolation and relatively low population density. The expansion of the integrated system of agriculture, cattle raising, and forest, already used among the most advanced segments of agribusiness and family farming, in addition to a massive program of tree planting (preventing at least partially biodiversity loss), could position the country well to take advantage on the global carbon market, recently approved at the Glasgow Conference (2021). The international community (governments, markets, and civil society) expects a positive shift in Brazilian environmental policy, particularly after the anti-environmental administration of Bolsonaro. For such environmental developments to take place, the approval rate of the new Lula administration will have to grow. Otherwise, a declining government approval could undermine the potential of implementing the new environmental guidelines of the winning platform.