Seminar debates improvements in international negotiations

The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Mapa) and representatives of the private sector discussed this Wednesday (19), in Brasília, ways to streamline and professionalize international negotiations, at the “1st Seminar on International Missions in Agricultural Defense”. The event brought together members of the Brazilian Agriculture and Livestock Confederation (CNA), the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB), meat exporters, among others.

Currently, the Ministry maintains 502 negotiations focused on the export of products of animal and vegetable origin, involving 129 countries and international organizations. In 2019, 26 international missions, from 14 countries, came to Brazil. To implement these commercial agreements, Mapa issues 7 documents annually.

According to Mapa's secretary of commerce and international relations, ambassador Orlando Leite Ribeiro, there is no point in bilateral negotiations going well if the mission is a failure. "All aspects – cultural, language, health, commercial – need to be attended to", he highlights. The private sector must understand and know the negotiators and technicians they are receiving. "We cannot impose our business model, we have to listen to what importers want it”, warned the ambassador. 

The Secretary of Agricultural Defense, José Guilherme Leal, stressed that failure in the critical and attention points highlighted by traditional markets is not acceptable, as exporters already know the requirements. “Such non-conformities often compromise the establishment, the productive sector and even the country”, he added.

The director of the department of Technical, Sanitary and Phytosanitary Themes of the Secretariat of International Relations, Leandro Feijó, explained that meeting missions involves defining priority markets, with the study of all marketing aspects (quotas, tariffs, logistics, biotechnology, among others). ), monitoring the fair calendar, terms of cooperation maintained between Mapa and entities, quality in filling out questionnaires passed on to importers and in the approval of exporting establishments. 

As challenges to expanding external markets, Feijó cited third-generation barriers that question the effects of agricultural production on climate change, food security, biological diversity, animal welfare, traditional peoples, biosecurity, among others. “These barriers have been increasingly used by importers and we need to have answers for them”, concluded the director.