The Environmental Regularization Program and the need to grant credit to those who need to comply with it

The regularization of rural properties has become increasingly important for the development of the agricultural market in Brazil. The export of agricultural products increasingly depends on proving the origin of the products and the conditions under which production took place. Relevant markets began to demand from rural producers a more in-depth demonstration that their production is not associated with reprehensible practices, such as deforestation or slavery, not to mention the well-known health issues that accompany the producer's life. agriculture for many years.

Land regularization, despite being clearly necessary, often becomes so costly to rural producers that they prefer to remain irregular, even though this prevents them from accessing the export market or even makes internal sales to large companies and multinationals difficult. , which often require specific certifications for the products they purchase.

This issue goes beyond the private interests of rural producers and, in fact, becomes a matter of state: improving the “environmental compliance” of Brazilian agricultural properties and productions needs to be understood as something of public interest, since regularization improves the environment of business in the countryside, brings more efficiency to agricultural exports, increases legal security and also makes it much easier to identify irregular actions that could put the reputation of the producing region – or even the country itself – at risk!

It is, therefore, a matter of interest to the entire country, not just one sector or another, given the revenue it can generate for Brazil in the medium and long term.

One of the many examples of great public interest in this matter is the entry into force of Law 14.595, of 2023, which establishes periods for landowners to register their lands in the Rural Environmental Registry (“CAR”) and, with this, begin to comply with the Environmental Regularization Program, formulated by the Federal Government. It turns out that regularizing a farm can be so costly to the producer that complying with the rule may become completely unfeasible.

In situations like this, the government is expected to provide some assistance to rural producers who wish to regularize their lands. This is because there is no point in the government imposing more responsibilities on farmers than they already have, without offering them alternatives to comply with the legal requirement. One of the ways that could be useful to achieve the objective outlined, for example, would be through the creation of specific financing lines for this type of operation, with viable payment conditions, in addition to differentiated and subsidized rates and interest, of some kind. way, by public authorities.

Certainly, this type of measure would make life considerably easier for rural producers and would bring many benefits to the country's agricultural production. A greater number of regular lands means, as already mentioned, greater productivity, greater export capacity, better land management by rural producers, better possibility of inspection by public authorities, etc. What seems incomplete to us, however, is assigning yet another task (and a cost!) to the producer, without at least providing him with a new tool to accomplish it.

By José Nantala Bádue Freire, lawyer, Miguel Neto Advogados