The elected board of the Brazilian Association of Soy Producers (Aprosoja Brazil) for the three-year period 2024-2027 takes office this Tuesday (23), at 7pm, in Brasília.
The command of the institution will be with rural producer Maurício Buffon, current 1st administrative director, who will succeed Antonio Galvan, president of the entity since April 2021.
The new board was unanimously elected on April 2 and includes representatives from the country’s main grain producing regions.
Son and grandson of small farmers, Buffon is 47 years old and is from Ronda Alta, in the north of Rio Grande do Sul, a municipality located in a grain producing region and characterized by small properties.
In 1985, he moved with his family to Sorriso, in Mato Grosso and, in 2009, he saw opportunities in Tocantins, where he moved with his brother.
“What attracted me to the North Region was the climate, the opportunities and the fact that it is an expanding region for grain production. Matopiba (areas of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia) is currently responsible for around 30% of grain production in Brazil. Tocantins is today a state with great agricultural growth”, he highlights.
Career at Aprosoja
Buffon was one of the founding partners of the Association of Soy and Corn Producers of the State of Tocantins (Aprosoja-TO), in 2013. In October 2017, he became president of the entity, being re-elected in 2019.
As leader of Aprosoja Tocantins, he actively promoted the entity’s actions against attempts to implement taxes on the sale of soybeans and agricultural inputs at the state level.
“The producer has the right to directly export his production free of charge. We had many clashes against agricultural taxation, which violates the Kandir Law. Aprosoja has always been committed to defending the producer”, highlighted the director.
In June 2019, Aprosoja promoted the Responsible Soy seminar in Tocantins, which resulted in the “Carta de Palmas”, a document in which Aprosoja reaffirmed, based on scientific information provided by Embrapa, the sustainability of production in the Brazilian Cerrado and reinforced the importance of the Forest Code.
“The Letter of Palmas was translated into several languages and spread throughout the world in reaction to the attempt by tradings to implement the Moratorium on Soy. With this we managed to put the brakes on the zero deforestation agenda and showed that Brazil can serve consumer markets by having one of the most restrictive environmental laws in the world”, he highlighted.
About to assume the presidency of the largest soybean producers’ entity in Latin America, Maurício Buffon recognizes Antonio Galvan’s efforts during his tenure at Aprosoja.
“I’ve known Galvan since my days in Mato Grosso. He is a leader respected by all rural producers. He is a fighter, who has a lot of determination and pays the price for his actions in defense of the institution. I thank Galvan for supporting our name”, he concluded.
