The goal of SUFICA is to enhance the competitiveness, sustainability and long term resilience of fruit in the Sao Francisco Valley in Brazil as it intensifies, through cutting edge research on agricultural ecosystem services and biodiversity. The project will work with growers and international supply companies to co-design and test nature-based innovations on intensive fruit farms, which generate multiple environmental benefits whilst enhancing profitability of farms through improved yield or quality and reduced inputs. the project thus used an understanding of ecosystem services and functions to support the move away for unsustainable small-scale farm systems. /nThe project is ground-breaking. It tests ecological intensification using a replicated BACI experimental design, co-developed with the farming community in a specific landscape, to generate long-lasting impact. To our knowledge, this has never been done before.

1.-Establish a transnational community of prctice focussed on introducing nature-based solutions to secure the long term sustainability of fruit farming in Chile and Brazil. Growers, suppliers, researchers and other stakeholders will meet regularly in the Sao Francisco Valley and share information. The group will interact with a similar community in Chile, via shared international buyers, creating a transnational community of practice. This objective included capacity building, achieved through training producers and technicians. 2.- Co-design, experimentally implement and monitor effects of an innovation or set of innovations to enhance farmland biodiversity, biodiversity-based ecosystem services - pollination and carbon sequestration - and crop yield while reducing inputs of water and perhaps also pesticides. The appropiate innovation (s) will be selected by participating farmers and researchers at the second SUFICA workshop, on the basis of existing evidence, feasibility for farmers and fit to farmina system. As examples, they might include adding organic matter to the sol, enhancing ground cover, or planting flower strips or hedgerows along field boundaries or irrigation channels. 3.- Quantify ecological and agronomic impacts of nature-based innovation on 8 matched pairs of experimental and control farms and their surrounding landscapes. This includes baseline surveys in year 1 and measures of response to innovations in year 2 and 3. Data on biodiversity (plants, vertebrates and invertebrates) ecosystem services (pollination, carbon storage, crop yield) and farm inputs (water and pesticides) will be collected, to characterise the food-water-environment nexus. 4.- Construct spatially explicit models to predict responses to nature-based innovations for one ecosystem service (pollination) and one element of natural capital stock (habitat quality). Validate predictions for baselines and responses, using data from objective 3. 5.- Develop a globally-recognised online farm biodiversity assessment tool so it is applicable to Latin America farms, in partnerships with the Cool Farm Alliance. This can be used by farmers to report and gain credit for efforts to support biodiversity, enhancing relationships with intenational suppliers. The underlying scientific hypothesis is that regulating ecosystem services can be co-erced to flow in bundles, therefore be synergistically enhanced in semi-arid agricultural landscapes by management actiions within reach of individual growers. The research will explore mechanisms behind multiple service flows, using state-of-the-art mapping and modelling to predict changes to natural capital stock and ecosystem service delivery. A parallel aim is to develop and strengthen a multi-actor, trans-disciplinary research community of fruit growers and researchers in the caatinga, which develops its own landscape-scale research infrastructure and outlives the SUFICA project.