Ricardo Morales is an Economist from UNAM and holds a Public Policy Masters’ from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He began his career as a consultant in various foundations and organizations, starting from analysis to project coordination, and later, with the confidence of the governing bodies, he was promoted to area director.

In 2004, he started AgroDer with the vision of incorporating sustainable development into all projects. Since founding AgroDer, he has been responsible for leading the consulting area, leading over 400 projects. Thanks to the trust of clients, partners, and allies, these projects span all the states of the Mexican Republic, as well as North, Central, and South America, Europe, and Africa, where several active projects are ongoing.

1. Could you share with us what AgroDer is? And what are the main services it offers?

We are a company founded in 2004 that helps with studies and projects through various services focused on market intelligence, strategic planning, public policy, and strategic communication. We work on issues related to the primary sector (agriculture, livestock, agribusiness), natural conservation (soil, water, emissions, different ecosystems), and sustainable development. We like to face challenges, accompanying growers and farmers to contact markets and sustainability goals. We work with suppliers seeking to trade in the sector, leveraging our knowledge and network of contacts, and we undertake challenges focused on specific projects where the strategic vision of these sectors is a key criterion to achieve objectives.

2. How was it for you to collaborate with various associations and foundations, especially working for The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)?

I joined FAO more than 20 years ago as a consultant. I had the opportunity to learn directly from the person in charge of public policy and FAO’s project support in Latin America. I was also connected to many personalities in the sector who were working towards common objectives. Shortly later, I founded AgroDer, and since 2016, I was selected to participate in FAO again as part of a committee dedicated to identifying challenges related to the environmental impact of food production and the path to sustainability. I still hold this position, which allows me to continue learning from great leaders in the sector worldwide who are busy developing projects that transition from traditional production to sustainable production. At the same time, I contribute the experience we have acquired in different projects in various parts of Mexico and the world.

3. How important do you consider the agribusiness industry in Mexico to be, and what are the main challenges you consider growers are currently facing?

The agribusiness industry is a matter of national security and should be treated as such. It directly supports more than 6 million families in the country and indirectly provides food for more than 130 million of us who consume farm products in our territory, as well as many more dinner tables in different countries that trust and prefer Mexican production. We are the main exporter of many agribusiness products, which puts our sector in a privileged position as it is practically one of Mexico’s emblems in the world. At the same time, it generates jobs in the service and supply sectors of inputs and machinery, also fostering scientific and technological development on an ever-increasing scale.

However, the agribusiness industry faces several challenges: international competition, exchange rate variations, new regulations, market demands, soil health, water availability, vulnerability to the effects of climate change, and additional pressures such as competition for labor or its availability.

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We cannot ignore that it is the main user of soil and water in the country and one of the main sectors in carbon emissions. It has also been one of the main causes of the loss of forest cover and biodiversity in various regions.

To face these challenges, it is essential to have a comprehensive vision of agriculture: it must be a profitable business unit, sensitive to its environment, and responsible for sound practices.

4. What is your opinion of regenerative agriculture, how has it been implemented in Mexico, and do you consider it to be financially viable for agricultural companies?

Regenerative agriculture, as a form of sustainable agriculture, is one of the most sustainable due to the number of criteria it entails. From AgroDer and personally, I encourage and promote it. Regenerative agriculture is based on four principles that seek to improve the conditions of the production site with a strong focus on soils: reduction (even elimination) of chemical use, reduction of tillage, introduction of livestock species, and cover crops.

All this encourages diversity and considers the context of each site. Although its primary focus is on soils, it significantly impacts other endogenous elements of agriculture, such as water and emissions. It also seeks to have an exogenous impact on the living conditions of the farmer, his community, and the food he provides to the consumer. This principle is more philosophical than a set of parametric criteria. It is based on everything being implemented in the best and greatest possible way, depending on the context of each grower and site.

If we nourish soils, the current vicious cycle of dependence on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides will tend to be reduced and, in some cases, eliminated. It also provides ideal characteristics for biological controls for biotic stress effects and improves the conditions under which a crop can resist abiotic stresses and develop with the help of biological-based stimulants and fertilizers.

Depending on the context and production conditions, the grower can see a significant return in economic terms over different time frames through savings and increased yields. In Mexico, this is being heard more often, although still with isolated efforts and, in some cases, with discrete magnitudes. Part of the challenge is to make it serious: not only to use it as a commercial tool for agribusiness but to implement it on larger scales and magnitudes, involving as many of the principles mentioned above as possible.

Undoubtedly, regenerative agriculture is a benchmark for the next agricultural revolution, which aims to reverse many of the negative impacts and externalities of the previous one.

5. Which countries are currently implementing this type of agriculture, and what have been their accomplishments?

Different countries have made progress in adopting regenerative agriculture. Almost all of them are looking to solve a specific problem that arises regionally and, in most cases, is a consequence of previous harmful agricultural practices: soil erosion, water shortage or stress, water quality, expansion of the agricultural frontier, reduction of emissions, and recovery of biodiversity. In almost all these cases, the aim is also to build resilience to the various abiotic stress conditions that have become more recurrent because of climate change.

In these cases, they combine the use of biological inputs and composts, cover crops, reduced tillage (or no tillage), biological pest control, the introduction of different livestock species—from small ruminants to large extensions of grazing cattle—and the introduction of service crops to enrich the soil biota.

there are improvements in different regions of the United States, including many of the cases mentioned in the *Common Ground* and *Kiss the Ground* documentaries. There are also relevant cases in the United Kingdom, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, European countries, and in East Africa.

Although the results are variable, two common factors are the permanence of growers in regenerative agriculture and the reduction in dependence on external elements (particularly synthetic fertilizers): if the soil has nutrients restored, the plant will require less and less external help to obtain them. This is one of the shortest-term effects growers see: savings. As practices are increased, it is common to see an increase in yields and quality that allows income to grow. Although the scales and impacts vary, the most relevant results are affecting soil health, both phenologically and economically, on the development of agricultural production.

6. Could you explain what sustainability is? And how can farmers implement this practice as part of their operations?

The people who make up AgroDer and me, are passionate about this topic.

We promote sustainability in the agricultural sector, understood as a vision where the conditions for Healthy, Sensitive, and Profitable agriculture are integrated. Healthy, in terms of the means of production, the environment, the resources it uses (water, soil), and the products it sells in the market, which must be innocuous and rich in nutrients. It must also be sensitive to its biological environment, the people who work in it, and the communities where it can impact; fundamentally, agriculture must be a Solvent activity because we are convinced that agriculture needs to be a profitable business for the growers. When we achieve Healthy, Sensitive, and Profitable agriculture, we finally describe Sustainable Agriculture.

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When a grower wants to approach sustainability, he starts by asking himself how he is doing concerning the three S’s and draws a road map, identifying challenges, objectives, and mechanisms to have a plan.

We have created a plan that allows us to identify the problem or challenge we are facing, the objective we are pursuing, and the tools we use to achieve it. With this, we draw up a plan to achieve a balance, ensuring we have agriculture with increasingly better conditions in each of these three pillars. In most cases, producers are not only convinced, but they invite more producers to spread the idea of sustainability.

7. How can agricultural companies in Mexico combine regenerative agriculture, sustainability, and innovations in AI, and what are the main applications with which they could start working in the short term?

The transition to sustainable agriculture is mainly driven by one of four factors: regulations that seek to improve production systems and reduce harmful elements in food and its applications in the field; incentives, when the grower obtains premium prices or faces conditions for entering a market; risks, both commercial and reputational, as well as physical risks at the production site when facing challenges such as soil health, water availability, or phenological development of crops; and advantages in improving conditions in the field and strategic positioning at commercial scales.

To approach each of these, there are different innovations—many based on artificial intelligence, such as plant, soil, water, and climate analysis—with predictive patterns that allow producers to approach their production objectives sustainably, facilitating decision-making in the field.

AI for agriculture is still in its early stages (it is not yet established or within the reach of all growers), and the scope of its implementation must consider both the contexts and human-scale decision-making for its use in agriculture.

8. What are the trends that you think will impact the industry in the years ahead?

From the production perspective, there is an increasing adoption of precision agriculture (sensors, GIS, drones), closely linked to automation and the adoption of artificial intelligence (as well as big data and blockchain), which, even in the development stages, have been well accepted by growers.

As it evolves on commercial scales, it will become more available to producers with smaller farms.

We also see this linked to sustainable practices (including regenerative), hand-in-hand with biotech advances.

Many of these trends will also be driven by changes in consumer habits.

9. In what manner do you believe consumers have evolved over the past decade, and what impact has this had on the global agricultural sector?

There is more and more information about food and its contents, which makes consumers more educated on the subject and more active in seeking products that, firstly, do not harm their bodies and, secondly, are produced in a more environmentally friendly way.

The growth in demand for chemical-free products is a clear trend in this regard, where consumers seek to avoid products that use chemicals during production. This trend has permeated many areas, with the chemical load of farm products reduced and modifying production patterns, even if they do not become organic.

The next step is to return nutrients to the products so that they are dense in their contents and the consumer can seek them out (something that an organic seal cannot identify). One of the best ways to do this is by returning nutrients to the soil and plants through practices such as those already mentioned in regenerative agriculture and other forms of sustainable agriculture.

On this issue, it is important to be clear that growers must face several challenges simultaneously, with two major premises: to meet their production objectives with a profitable business, so sustainable practices must allow them to solve the problems they face with affordable solutions, and to offer products to the market in the conditions demanded by consumers.

10. Would you like to add anything else?

To invite growers to take a step towards sustainability.

It cannot be achieved overnight; it is a journey. On this journey, there are many allies and experiences from other growers that can be useful. There are also many institutions involved that can accompany them in this transition, which we are convinced is the only way forward: sustainability.

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