By Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, President of the Board of Directors of Instituto Terra
Originally published in the Annual Report 2023
Instituto Terra was born out of a dream. A bold dream, rooted in the desire to restore a depleted land and make it a symbol of hope. In 2023, that dream turned 25. In this letter published in the Annual Report, the president of the Board of Directors, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, shares the milestones of this trajectory and the new horizons that are opening up for ecological restoration and the socio-environmental transformation of the Rio Doce Valley – with the launch of the Terra Doce program and the expansion of planted forest. A testimony to continuity, maturity and the courage to dream again.
Instituto Terra | Letter from the President
Instituto Terra was born out of a dream 25 years ago.
The dream of bringing life back to a farm that seemed dead.
The dream of replanting a native forest in a land where not even pasture grew anymore.
This dream has brought us to this day, in 2023, with the certainty that we knew what we needed to do and where we wanted to go. Realizing this dream has required creativity and resilience. As a result of this path, the Institute today has a robust and dynamic structure, strengthened by the experience of having replanted a highly biodiverse forest and of hosting, in this living and restored space, countless animal species that make up a complete food chain.
The year 2023 marks a symbolic turning point for our institution. We are 25 years old and can be proud of the institution we are today. Anyone lucky enough to walk through Instituto Terra will see a mature forest, with a closed canopy and a dense understory. The more than 3 million trees planted here are reproducing, ensuring that our forest is a living organism that will be around forever.
Our great technical knowledge is passed on to all our areas, not just our nursery, which is modernized every year, or our planting and monitoring teams. Over the years, our administrative and financial areas have improved to a level that allows us to work with institutions that demand the highest level of governance and transparency, as is the case with two of our most important partners: the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), through KfW, and the multinational insurance company Zurich Insurance Group Ltd. Our educational center has already trained 219 environmental technicians in a one-year full-time course with student housing at the Instituto Terra. Our relationship with science grows stronger every year, and it’s no coincidence that this year our board of directors welcomed Professor Ricardo Rodrigues, director of ESALQ’s prestigious Forest Ecology and Restoration Laboratory.
Marking Instituto Terra’s entry into a more mature phase, this year we took two important steps that will reinforce the meaning of our mission to transform the Rio Doce Valley and allow us to dream in a new and powerful way. With the support of Zurich Insurance Group, we bought a 340-hectare farm bordering our historic 700-hectare area. With this addition, our extension will increase by 50%, and we are already negotiating another adjacent area of 1200 hectares. The forest space we have already planted has the prospect of being tripled with the planting of approximately 9 million additional trees. As well as reinforcing the biodiversity of our forest and offering more opportunities for a greater number of animal species to find refuge at Instituto Terra, our teams will be able to test and experiment with planting techniques that are unique in Brazil, made without the use of herbicides or other groundwater pollutants.
The Terra Doce program, launched this year with the support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development through KFW, opens up new and historic perspectives for Instituto Terra. This program, which is in its first five-year phase, initially aims to restore 4,200 springs in the lower and middle Rio Doce and bring 600 small and medium-sized farms into agroforestry production modes, directly impacting more than 2,100 families. In the next phase, our horizon will be to restore another 50,000 springs and implement a production chain based on agroforestry systems throughout the region, which we began implementing this year. I invite the reader to research the Terra Doce program on our website and social networks. With this program, we intend to profoundly transform the Rio Doce valley, which has an area of 86,500 km² equivalent to that of Portugal. This transformation will take place not only by creating wealth for medium and small farmers, fostering the intellectual emancipation and citizen maturation of communities, but also by restoring the rain matrix in a region that is beginning to desertify. With the Terra Doce program, we aspire to create a model capable of bringing climate balance back to many other regions of Brazil that are currently suffering from water scarcity and lack of rain. With this program, we have authorized ourselves today to dream again.
We now dream of bringing the rain back to our valley!
And with this in mind, we will guide ourselves for many more years along the path of a real and powerful transformation, which I hope will not only transform the Rio Doce, but also, and perhaps above all, many other agricultural regions in our great country, consolidating a methodology that can be replicated on a large scale.
Finally, this year I took over from José Armando Campos, who chaired our board for six years and dedicated his precious time and rare talent to building and solidifying our structure. I am proud today to have been appointed president of a strong institution, which looks to the future with the confidence of someone who knows their place in the world and assumes their transformative mission.
Instituto Terra has many years ahead of it and is driven by powerful dreams and ideals.
Juliano Ribeiro Salgado
Chairman of the Board of Directors