The initiative will promote actions to support tourism with the concept of food landscapes The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has just signed technical cooperation agreement with Embrapa Food and Territories, whose central goal is the definition of a strategic framework for tourism development in rural food landscapes in three states in the Brazilian Northeast (Alagoas, Sergipe, and Pernambuco). The project is going to offer technological support and social visibility for farmers and agrifood products from the nexuses between biodiversity-agriculture-environment-tourism. As reported by João Flávio Veloso, general head of the state-owned research center located in Maceió, AL, the negotiations with the IDB were initiated over two years ago. "Strategies to enhance the tourism sector in food landscapes and the governance model obtained by this cooperation agreement will contribute to promoting territories and their food heritage, supporting a greater resilience of these production sectors involved, to face the climate impacts and risks related to the health and safety of all those involved in the post-pandemic period”, he highlights. He reported that the deriving documentary production of the project will guide similar initiatives in other regions of the country. “The project will have a duration of 24 months as soon as the first instalment of the funds is released. The work will be performed with a set of strategic partners, like the Federal Institute of Alagoas, representing the Academia, in addition to the structures of the state governments involved and FAPED as financial manager", adds the executive of the state-owned company of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply. Innovative differential The project was elaborated, step by step, counting on the technical monitoring of IDB itself. The idea is that the established objectives can target some of the bank's priority areas of intervention, such as socio-productive inclusion and equity; productivity and innovation and economic integration; climate change and environmental sustainability. “The differential of the project is in the proposal of solutions in alignment with the multifunctionality of agriculture and with sensitive issues, such as climate change and strategies for resuming economic activities post-COVID-19 pandemic. The solutions presented by Embrapa and partners must be ruled by factors like the tourist behavior changes and the positioning of the sector in light of related global emergencies, especially the health and climate change ones", details the researcher and deputy head of Research, Development, and Innovation from Embrapa Food and Territories, Ricardo Elesbão. "In the first stages of the sector's recovery, there will be less tourist movement, with tourists preferring areas that are closer to their places of residence, less massified, safer, and with healthier eating habits and experiences. New values and mentalities are emerging in the post-pandemic process, such as the search for emotional (re)connections, awareness when consuming, with emphasis on safe consumption, more health, and quality of life, and even on rethinking the dynamics in the metropolises, amongst others ", evaluates Elesbão. Embrapa also bets on an increasing consumer protagonism regarding more sustainable products, a phenomenon that should continue growing. “The project, then, will invest in strengthening the nexuses between food-territory-gastronomy, resulting in important alterations in the means of production, so that they are adjusted to the new and increasingly more rigorous demands for products developed with this collective concern”, says Ricardo. To have a notion of the importance of the tourist sector, in 2018 it reached one of the biggest economic growth indices at the global level, moving 1.4 billion tourists and more than US$1.7 trillion globally in 2018. In accordance with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), in 2020, the sector may have suffered losses between US$ 910 billion and US$ 1.2 trillion in revenue, putting between 100 and 120 million direct jobs at risk. “The food landscapes make it possible to experience tourism where the culinary, history, tradition, territory, ingredients and agricultural systems that produce them compose an unique scenario that is rich in singularities, allowing consumers to find differentiated products”, says the project coordinator Aluísio Goulart. “The economic relations that end up being constituted in this context allow for the sprouting and growth of other segments, in addition to agriculture, like those related to gastronomy, regional cuisine, and socialization around food. This way, the exclusive, authentic and singular aspects that become the differentiated products represent a chance for rural business diversification and generation of jobs and income in the fields and in the cities, which can be materialized, for example, by gastronomic itineraries”, he adds. It is with this logic that the project was conceived to enable tourists to undergo experiences related to traditions, cultures, and ways of life and production. A tourism model that can stimulate the conservation and maintenance of biodiversity. For the researchers involved in the cooperation fomented by IDB, defending this type of agrifood and biological diversity should directly and indirectly contribute to processes of mitigating the current harmful impacts produced by climate change, through the reduction of CO2 emissions, for example. “The development of the sustainable tourism, in the scope of the rural food landscapes, associated to its gastronomic heritage, rural spaces, and traditions, will also allow the promotion and strengthening of social inclusion by offering alternatives of job and diversification of sources of income for the population of the countryside, which is impacted with more force if compared with one in already established urban tourist areas”, Goulart affirms. He also recalls that investing in the relationship between tourism and rural experience consists of a powerful development strategy and positioning of a destination. “This is a strategy that has been emphasized by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), within the resumption of the sector’s activities in the medium and long term", he adds. The cooperation between Embrapa and IDB thus aims at developing and implementing strategies and actions for the revival of the tourism sector in the Northeast, based on tourist products that have been newly inserted in structured gastronomic itineraries with a territorial approach and the active participation of members of food landscapes in the states of Sergipe, Alagoas, and Pernambuco. Win-Win From the point of view of the IDB, this type of project and partnership aligns with the need to support the country's less developed regions to mitigate impacts and for post-COVID-19 pandemic economic recovery, with special added value in highly affected sectors, as is the case in the tourism sector. The proponents consider that tourism is recognized as a way for sustainable development and is included in the main debates on the sector, gathering the scholar’s engagement, entrepreneurs, associations, ONG's, authorities, and travelers of all the world. Since 2015, the UN has recognized sustainable tourism as a strategic tool for poverty reduction, biodiversity protection, and community development. Technical cooperation is something that has gained strategic increments in this challenging global moment, promoting the improvement of economic competitiveness through the delimitation of specific sectoral policies in tourism. The project strengthens the relations between the institutions, based on Embrapa's reputation in the scientific and knowledge-generation fields, complying with one of the bank's credit lines. "It is a difficult line to access because it is non-refundable. The bank has seen in this type of technical cooperation the opportunity to generate and transfer knowledge, based on the preparation of sectoral diagnoses and studies for a single country or for more regional initiatives. This is a model to promote development based on what is most solid, which is the knowledge generated by science, in which everyone wins: the bank, Embrapa, society and future generations," assesses João Flávio Veloso. Embrapa is a public company related to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply, a world reference in agriculture in the tropical climate, and in its agenda of research, development, and innovation, there is an extensive and comprehensive thematic line for the appreciation of agrobiodiversity, both on a business scale and on family farms. In 2018, it created its newest national research center dedicated to the theme of Food and Territories, based in Alagoas, a state in the Northeast of Brazil, a region that has historically received support from the IDB to promote development actions and improve the quality of life, with a focus on reducing poverty and social inequality through financial and technical support.