The future of agriculture and its impact on society in 2026.

The arrival of a new year is always a time for reflection, for taking stock of what we have done so far, and a time to plan for what lies ahead.

It's a reality that repeats itself in both the countryside and the city. It begins with the person who planted the wheat and doesn't know if the accounts will balance in the next harvest. It extends to those who produced the flour and faced the uncertainties of high interest rates, to the baker, and to any worker who woke up early every day to put bread on the table.

The message we farmers want to convey to society at this time is that, rain or shine, we will sow the seed in the soil. And this is an act of faith, of positive expectations for the future. At this moment, we trust that this seed will sprout, bear fruit, and generate benefits for many people – jobs, income, and food that is consumed throughout the world.

We are living through a difficult time. Agricultural prices remain at lower levels compared to recent years. Few countries have managed to meet their growth targets, and geopolitical conflicts are exacerbating uncertainty for everyone.

Credit for rural producers has never been so restricted. Brazil has broken a new record for judicial reorganizations among rural producers. Many of the cases are explained by a combination of high indebtedness and crop failures caused by adverse weather.

But we cannot lose hope. Agribusiness is made up of cycles of highs and lows. Therefore, the certainty we have is that when things are bad, the tendency is for things to improve.

In 2025, there were signs of progress in negotiations for the Mercosur-European Union agreement. This issue is fundamental for opening up new opportunities for our products, with greater stability in trade flows, which will have repercussions for the country's economy as a whole. However, once again, disagreements between European countries ended up postponing a decision on the agreement, which was then decided in January.

At COP 30, the world began to see realities that were previously known to few. Brazilian agriculture has and will continue to have a fundamental role in carbon sequestration and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the food chain, through practices that, although some countries are only now becoming aware of them, we have already widely adopted. This is the case with the use of cover crops to improve soil health and the integration of crop-livestock-forestry systems, to name just two examples.

Among the warnings for 2026, we ask everyone to pay attention to the regulation of pending points of the Tax Reform. We cannot allow the changes to further burden rural producers, which would lead to increased food prices, impacting inflation and the lives of each one of us.

It will be a year with strong electoral appeal, and we cannot allow excessive partisan concern to hinder urgent issues for the agricultural sector, such as guaranteeing a modern model of rural insurance to protect crops in cases of adverse weather conditions.

The Brazilian Rural Society, a century-old organization that I am proud to preside over, will be vigilant throughout this process and immune to any kind of ideology. Our focus is on defending rural producers and constantly seeking a positive impact on all of society. Happy 2026!

*Per Sergio Bortolozzo, president of the Brazilian Rural Society