Representatives of the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA) requested the transfer of the management of the National Irrigation Policy during a meeting with the chief of staff, Eliseu Padilha, on Tuesday (27). The request is for the matter to be dealt with again within the Ministry of Agriculture and no longer in the Ministry of National Integration, as it currently is.
The lawsuit had already been defended in the document “Open Letter to Irrigators”, prepared at the end of the Irrigation Seminar in Brazil: A new Management, promoted by the CNA, in 2017. Both the CNA and other representative entities of the sector pointed to change as fundamental for that public irrigation policies – which promote productive irrigation, responsible for 97% of the enterprises that use the technology in the country – can have a more direct link with the agricultural policy managed by the Ministry of Agriculture.
“Minister Eliseu Padilha was sympathetic to the lawsuit. He undertook to analyze the matter and give a return, soon, with the position of the Civil House and the Federal Government on the request of the CNA, “said the president of the National Environmental Commission of the CNA, Muni Lourenço.
During the meeting, a copy of the book “Sustainable Irrigated Agriculture in Brazil: Identification of Priority Areas” was also presented to Eliseu Padilha, launched by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) with CNA support at the 8th World Water Forum, last week.
According to Lourenço, the survey shows the promising horizon for the increase of food production in Brazil with the expansion of irrigation. FAO points out that Brazil has 4.5 million hectares available to be irrigated and inserted in the production process. “We need to use the already open areas with more productivity and, for that to happen, irrigation is fundamental,” said the president of the National Environmental Commission of the CNA. CNA technical advisor Gustavo Goretti and the president of the Parliamentary Front of Agriculture (FPA), Tereza Cristina, also attended the meeting.