The National Climate Risk Agricultural Zoning Program (Zarc) will present studies on canola, apple, peach, coffee, pineapple, chickpea, sugarcane, soybean and corn crops by the end of the year. Zarc will have new features such as expanded data on water storage and management levels, as well as risk information for different expected productivity and technological levels.
In 2020, the Mapa and Embrapa project to modernize Zarc began to receive financial support from the Central Bank of Brazil. In 2021, studies have already been delivered for citrus, passion fruit, forage sorghum and sunflower.
Last year, there were three new studies: cashew, irrigated tropical rice and castor bean in the semi-arid region, in addition to eight updated zonings: corn, 2nd harvest corn, castor bean, sorghum, millet, oats, barley and watermelon. The cowpea Zarc was expanded to new states.
Zoning aims to reduce risks related to climate problems and allows producers to identify the best time to plant, taking into account the region of the country, the culture and different types of soil. Farmers who follow Zarc's recommendations are less subject to climate risks and can still benefit from the Agricultural Activity Guarantee Program (Proagro) and the Rural Insurance Premium Subsidy Program (PSR). Many financial agents only release rural credit for crops in zoned areas.
Recently, Embrapa published a Research and Development Bulletin entitled “Prediction of Available Water in the Soil as a Function of Particle Size for Use in Risk Analysis in Agricultural Climate Risk Zoning”. The work will serve as a reference for generating Zarc based on six classes of available water, replacing the three classes currently used in Zarc.
Soil is a fundamental factor in determining the water risk of crops. In this way, risk assessments will be generated for a broader set of soil conditions, including new categories with lower and greater water storage capacity than the current ones. Furthermore, the subdivision into six classes will allow generating more accurate water risk results for each soil condition, improving the quality of Zarc's indications for producers in different regions of Brazil.
Zarc provides information on the best planting times in order to reduce losses due to adverse weather events, depending on the cultivar cycle and soil types. In addition to the cycle and soil, some techniques adopted as part of soil management are particularly relevant as they have resulted in significant improvements in soil water dynamics and water availability for crops, reducing, in many cases, the climate risk related to this factor. .
With this methodology, it will be possible to estimate the risk reduction achieved in each management class. In this way, it will be possible for producers who adopt the best practices to fit into management classes with lower climate risk.
Mapa is also developing with Embrapa the Agricultural Productivity Climate Risk Zoning (ZarcPro), which will provide risk information for different expected productivity and technological levels.
Crop models allow estimating productivity depending on weather and climate conditions and the physiological needs of plants. ZarcPro will consider different levels of expected productivity (PE) to assess the frequency of losses or the probability of not meeting the PE.
The analysis of data series on productivity estimated over the years, relating frequency and intensity of losses, allows generating a set of relevant information for pricing agro-climatic risk. This way, it will be possible to identify for each region or season, which is the most appropriate PE, for regions of high and low productivity.
Also worth highlighting: the recent incorporation of functionalities in the Zarc - Plantio Certo application, which now includes crop monitoring via the NDVI index, weather forecast, satellite images and production costs, and the implementation, starting in 2022 , validation of Zarc with public granting, which will allow interested parties access to information on Zarc planting dates, prior to the validation stage of the study.
The Zarc Plantio Certo mobile application, developed by Embrapa Informática Agropecuária (Campinas/SP), is available in application stores: iOS e Android.
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