Alysson Paolinelli of Brazil was awarded the 2006 World Food Prize along with Edson Lobato of Brazil and Colin McClung of the United States, for the vital role each played in transforming the Cerrado – a region of vast, once infertile tropical high plains stretching across Brazil – into highly productive cropland. Although they worked independently of one another, in different decades and in different fields, their collective efforts over 50 years unlocked Brazil’s tremendous potential for food production. Their advancements in soil science, policy leadership, and extension made agricultural development possible in the Cerrado, named from Portuguese words meaning “closed, inaccessible land.”
Paolinelli received his degree in Agronomy Engineering in 1959 at the agriculture college of the Superior School of Lavras in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. He began teaching there in the 1960s and was a catalyst of the school’s efforts to expand and improve its curriculum and faculty, secure funding, and bring the school into the national system of agricultural colleges as the Federal University of Lavras. From 1967 to 1971, he served as dean, during which time he encouraged faculty members to obtain technical education abroad.
In 1971, Paolinelli was appointed Secretary of Agriculture of Minas Gerais and served in that capacity until 1974. During this period, his long-held conviction of Brazil’s great potential for food production – specifically in the Cerrado region – began to be realized as he created policies, institutions and infrastructure to encourage significant development.
As Secretary of Agriculture in Minas Gerais, Paolinelli’s top priority was to dramatically increase support of agricultural research and training in that state. He created an agency to integrate all the agricultural teaching and research entities in Minas Gerais, and he encouraged universities to collaborate with farmers to improve agricultural practices. He cooperated with Brazilian and international credit agencies to hire more than 1,000 new technical researchers over three years.
Paolinelli also created a new model for rural credit to support integrated agricultural operations. Loans were made available at very low interest, with a grace period extended beyond one crop season and with payments allowing farmers to keep and reinvest a share of their profits. With this support for expanded research and agricultural production, large-scale development in the Cerrado was initiated.
As Brazil’s Minister of Agriculture from 1974 to 1979, Paolinelli oversaw the establishment and implementation of the Brazilian Corporation of Agricultural Research (EMBRAPA) as a model research and extension institution that improved and diffused technologies for advancing modern agriculture throughout the country. He also formed the Cerrado Center (CPAC) within EMBRAPA, which focused considerable resources on agricultural development in that region. With his ongoing support of research to improve and enhance agriculture, “He was the leader that farmers consistently turned to solve their problems and assist them in advancing agricultural and rural development,” said Eliseu Roberto de Andrade Alves, former president of EMBRAPA.
In 1974, Paolinelli initiated the Polocentro program to finance and develop agricultural production and rural communities on three million hectares across the entire Cerrado region. Within three years, that goal had been surpassed. To sustain further growth, Paolinelli attracted public, private and foreign investments to complement the federal government’s funds for developing the Cerrado. In 1978, he negotiated an agreement between Brazil and Japan to bring together financial resources to invest in research, extension and entrepreneurship enterprises to further the opening and settlement of the Cerrado.
Prior to Paolinelli’s work, Brazil had to import most of its food. But in the decades after his agricultural production plan for the Cerrado region was developed, Brazil has become an important food exporter, greatly increasing its annual soybean production and producing over $40 billion worth of crops per year.
Said Antonio Herminio Pinazza, Executive Director of the Association of Brazilian Agribusinesses, “As an agronomic engineer, farmer, rural leader, public official, and consultant in agribusiness, Minister Paolinelli has demonstrated visionary leadership, exceptional ability, and has justly earned the nation’s gratitude.”