Alagoano Rural Renaissance (ARR)

SDGs are important because they are the primary international framework for galvanizing action toward eliminating poverty in all its forms by 2030. This project implements these at the Community level.

Promotion of healthy eating and a balanced diet by distributing information, tools and formal training to address malnutrition, improve individual health, and potentially save lives. Using Social sites, WhatsApp and personalized SMS messaging tailored to the unique needs of the Community and family who are in rural locations with extremely limited access to information sources other than a mobile phone.

The project provides a 4 day training course in Nutritional and healthy supplements that can be incorporated into the families daily meals. More than 80 individuals are to be trained as the project multipliers to extend the training and practices to reach the 1700 families within the initial communities.

In just one of the settlements, 407 families with approximately 1500 people of various ages does not have reliable Internet access or GRID supplied electricity due to the remoteness of the community and frequency of power transmission outages. This project will provide the necessary Community WiFi to support Health, Nutrition, and Farming Smart Technology Services that includes Satellite and Drone imagery to monitor and alert farmers with information related to their Crop Production, Pest and Disease Identification; and farm specific micro-climate reporting. Without the WiFi capability, the planned agricultural and telemedicine support for the community would not be possible.

Solar panels and Nano Luminescent Lighting will be provided to power the WiFi and at source harvest of the Medicinal and Herbal plants.

Sintrópic Inter-cropping of seasonal (providing 3 crops per year), permanent crops, fruit trees, Nutraceuticals, and native forestry will replace the historic single crop (Sugarcane) plantings.

Results of the Medicinal and Herbal Plant Supplemented Clinical Trials, SUS Reporting, and Independent Validation of Health and Well-Being improvements will be anonymized, and the data shared with Brazilian and Global Big Data initiatives for Healthcare.

Farmer-to-Farmer Plant Propagation and Localized Seed Banks will be established to support the project continuation, expansion and sustainability.

This project will provide Individual Family and Community-wide Impacts:

$$$ First year family increases of 10-15% on prior year net earnings, and 20-30% increases beginning the follow-on year for each of the initial Woman and Youth lead families.

• New Business creation employing 30-Seasonal jobs and 12-Full-time jobs at the new Medicinal and Herbal Plant Processing and Distribution Facility. A new ISO Quality and Certified Production business that will be established to process all of the cash crop (the excess not required by the Families) Medicinal and Herbal products produced by this project.
• New Business Creation- Farmer Direct; 4-Full-time jobs packaging products developed in the Community and sold direct to Consumers; Prepayment by the Consumer provides the financing for each farmer. This offers Community competition to produce quality and self sustainability.
• New Business Creation for Community Specific MicroFinancing: Taking Farmer to Consumer Profits and investing in the Community farmers; Administrated and overseen by Community leaders.
• 240 hours of Smart Agriculture and AgroEconomic Education and Training.
• Training and Diploma Certification of Community individuals as First-responders skilled in the formulation and use of Medicinal and Herbal Plants as Alternative Medicines.

The successful results from this initial project will bring an additional 400+ families and their 490+ Ha (within these same Communities) into alignment with the goals of this project.

Lessons Learned from this project will be incorporated into ongoing projects involving some 50.000 small holder farms in Alagoas under the Degraded Lands & Desert Regeneration, Farmer to Farmer, Innovation & Technology Transfer, Pharmacy@Home, and SALSA-BR projects.

• Lessons learned from this project will be added on the FAO's TECA platform (agricultural technologies and practices – to help small producers in the field)
• Twining of the Brasilian-Lusophone Commonwealth (Portuguese speaking African Nations) Support to Farmers' Organizations in Africa Programme (SFOAP); the European Network for Rural Development (ENRD); the European LEADER Association for Rural Development (ELARD); and the European Innovation Partnership 'Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability' (EIP Agri) in order to strengthen the voice of small Women or Youth rural farms .
• Project activities support the concepts of a 'multi-actor approach’ based on genuine collaborations between small farm producers, researchers, advisory services and the commercial sector.

The new Community services will also provide the critical enabling communications support for TeleMedicine, Nutritional, and Agroecology Services (from other ongoing projects).

• Community members suffering from heart failure, diabetes, alcohol, drug or COPD can be remotely monitored, drastically improving response and intervention times to save lives and reduce hospital admissions.

Focused on just the three communities, this project will provide initial benefits to:

• 8,000 malnourished school children via nutritional supplements
• 1,700-Women and Youth Landless families;

Beginning in the project follow-on year:

• More than 25,000 other rural families in Alagoas will benefit from this project (the target is to expand to 150,000 families by 2020)
• 5 New Businesses will be created - employing up to 28 people (Initially)

This project will forever change a 80+ year history of single crop production, eliminate crop residue burning, and reduce GHGs by 1,098.6 Gg CO2e moving towards the goal of Zero Net.

The project implements a phased transformation of a total of 50,000 Ha of sugarcane designed to address the GHG reduction goals.

• Due to the change to an agroforest, new production methodologies and a varying 3 crop harvest per year across the totality of the project, the transformational GHG changes will materialize in years 1, 2 and 3.
• In the first year 10,0000 Ha will be transformed, in year 2 another 20,000 Ha, and in year 3 the rest.