CESB celebrates 15 years

It all started in 2008, when professionals and experts who sought to increase soybean productivity in Brazil met and created a group...

The central idea was to provide a national and regional environment that would encourage soybean growers and technical consultants to challenge their knowledge and also encourage the development of innovative cultivation practices, which would make it possible to extract the crop's maximum potential, with sustainability and profitability.

At that moment, the Soja Brasil Strategic Committee, CESB, was born, a non-profit OSCIP (Civil Society Organization of Public Interest).

Luiz Antonio da Silva, current Executive Director of CESB, remembers that the challenges were great. “In the 2000s, the average production of soybeans, according to data from CONAB, was stationary at around 43 sc/ha, but the academy and also observations at field level showed that we were still far from the productive ceiling of cultivation” , remember.

“We began to identify producers and consultants who were able, in a constant and sustainable way, to achieve high production averages and we mapped out the techniques and practices used to reach these production levels. We then began to share this information in a structured and democratic way throughout the soybean production system so that producers, at a national level, could assimilate and include such information in their cultivation practices to achieve the average sustainable increase in cultivation”, adds the Executive Director of CESB.

In the last 15 years, says Leonardo Sologuren, President of CESB, the Committee's most important mission has been to help increase the growth of average soybean productivity.

“During this period, we observed productivity at the Brazilian level registering growth of more than 20%, which means that the producer is improving its performance in the field”, points out the president of CESB.

CESB initiatives

Lorena Moura, Technical Coordinator of CESB, highlights that the Committee, since its inception in the 08/09 harvest, has been responsible for creating several initiatives, such as the launch of the National Challenge for Maximum Soy Productivity and the National Forum for Maximum Soy Productivity .

“The original idea of ​​the Challenge was for producers and consultants to challenge themselves, seeking to break their own barriers/production ceilings. To assist in the auditing process, a strict (patented) protocol was developed so that we could effectively prove such results”, reveals the CESB Technical Coordinator.

In the last five years, more than R$7 million were invested in auditing, to map more than 7.000 areas at a national level, providing total transparency and broad data collection.

The president of CESB adds that technological transfer is CESB's biggest objective and, for this reason, the National Maximum Productivity Challenge has become, over the years, the main tool to achieve this objective.

“Researching and analyzing the practice of national champions makes us understand which management strategies lead these producers to perform well above the national average. Technological transfer occurs through the case studies of these champions. We are still far from reaching the genetic potential of soybeans, therefore, CESB will still have a lot of work to do over the next fifteen years”, analyzes Sologuren.

In relation to the National Maximum Productivity Challenge, CESB's partnership with Fundação Espaço Eco, established by BASF in 2005, as a non-profit organization, with the mission of promoting sustainable development in the business environment and in society, is also worth highlighting.

The initiative adds and highlights robust sustainability criteria to the National Maximum Productivity Challenge, increasing CESB's visibility and positioning among its stakeholders (farmers, society, etc.).

"In this sense, Fundação Espaço Eco carries out an evaluation of the environmental and economic performance of the National Champions and Regional Champions of the Challenge, comparing it with the respective regional averages. The initiative brings the reading that the high productivity of the champion areas is associated with sustainability , in an overview", highlights CESB's technical coordinator.

Over the 15 editions of the National Soybean Maximum Productivity Challenge, more than 48 thousand registrations were made, showing the potential of the initiative and reinforcing CESB as a great ally of the national soybean industry.

Over the last 5 years, Desafio had a significant average productivity of 104,30 bags per hectare (sc/ha), among the TOP 100 producers/consultants.

Evolution of productivity

CESB's Marketing Director, Nilson Caldas, observes that the productivity evolution of the National Soy Maximum Productivity Challenge has some extremely relevant moments. "The first of these is breaking the barrier of 100 bags, in the 2009/10 harvest, with the champion reaching 108,40 sc/ha. Then, in the 2012/13 harvest, we had the winner reaching 110,5 sc/ha and surpassing the then important mark of 110 bags", he recalls.

The third moment, according to the Marketing Director, occurred in the 2014/15 harvest, with the champion surpassing 140 bags and recording 141,8 sc/ha, a number surpassed in the 16/17 harvest, when we had the record, until today not exceeded, 149,10 sc/ha.

Another indicator that deserves to be highlighted is the average productivity of the participants. "In the 2008/09 harvest, the top 10 producers in the Challenge registered an average of 77,8 sc/ha, with only 02 producers producing more than 90 sc/ha. In the 2020/2021 harvest, this number jumped to 119,75 sc/ha, with 381 producers surpassing the 90 sc/ha mark", analyzes the Marketing Director.

"Several factors contributed to this clear evolution of national soybean farming, such as the correction of the soil profile in deeper layers, up to 40 cm; the construction of soil physics through the use of cover crops; the speed of planting, while around 4 km/h, allowing better spatial arrangement; genetic materials with high productive potential; crop rotation and management using chemical and biological, applied at the right time in a preventive manner", analyzes Nilson Caldas.

Other initiatives

The National Forum for Maximum Soy Productivity, an itinerant event with the participation of producers, technicians and consultants, was created with the aim of sharing the information collected during the Challenge.

To increase the dissemination of good production practices, CESB also created the Regional Forum for Maximum Soy Productivity, in which sustainable and productive issues began to be addressed more assertively in the main soy producing areas in Brazil.

The Executive Director of CESB recalls that another relevant action was the creation of the CESB Research Network, in which consultants and research institutions conduct protocols for possible new technologies/practices, generated by CESB's National Maximum Productivity Challenge to significantly contribute to achieving maximum soybean productivity.

“CESB recently aligned itself with one of the largest precision agriculture platforms in the world, seeking to further enrich the information generated by the Challenge and which will be shared within the production system”, adds Silva.

CESB is made up of 19 expert members and 26 sponsoring organizations that believe in and contribute to the sustainable advancement of the highest levels of soybean productivity in Brazil, they are: Agrogalaxy, BASF, Bayer, Syngenta, Jacto, Atto Sementes, Brasmax, Corteva , Eurochem FTO, Ferticel, ICL, Koppert, Massey Ferguson, Mosaic, Stara, Stoller, Sumitomo Chemicals, Timac Agro, TMF, Ubyfol, UPL, Yara, Yoorin, Elevagro, Ibra and Somar Serviços Agro.