INTRODUCTION Contributed by: Domicio dos Santos Neto and Frederico Favacho, Santos Neto Advogados
Agribusiness at the Crossroads: Conflicts, Trade Realignments and New Frontiers in a Post-VUCA World Challenges for agribusiness worldwide For decades, the VUCA framework – an acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, coined by the U.S. Army War College in the aftermath of the Cold War – served as the dominant conceptual lens through which strategists, policymakers and busi- ness leaders mapped the challenges of an unpredict- able world. It was a useful shorthand: it captured the sense that the future had become harder to read, that cause and effect were increasingly difficult to trace, and that the rules governing markets, geopolitics and technology were in constant flux. For much of the first two decades of the 21st century, agribusiness operated in a world that was, in essence, a VUCA world – one characterised by commodity price cycles, climate variability, shifting trade flows and the gradual tightening of environmental and food safety requirements. Challenging, certainly, but navigable by those with the right information, the right relationships and the right legal and financial structures. That world no longer exists. It has been replaced by something qualitatively different: a condition that strategists and scholars have variously labelled BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear and Incomprehensible) or, in the terminology popularised by economist Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, a “polycri- sis” – a state in which multiple systemic shocks occur simultaneously, interact with each other in unpredict- able ways, and produce consequences that are dis- proportionate to and qualitatively different from the sum of their individual parts. In a polycrisis, it is not enough to understand each risk in isolation. The Strait of Hormuz closure drives up fer- tiliser prices at the precise moment when an emerging El Niño threatens crop yields. A landmark trade agree- ment between the EU and Mercosul enters into force at the exact moment when the EU bans Brazilian animal products over antimicrobial non-compliance. A tariff investigation launched in Washington reshapes export competitiveness for the very commodities that China has simultaneously committed to buying from a com- peting producer. Biofuel mandates create new demand
precisely when traditional commodity markets are over- supplied. No single one of these dynamics, taken alone, would be exceptional. Taken together, arriving in the same compressed timeframe and interacting across supply chains, regulatory frameworks, financial mar- kets and geopolitical alliances, they constitute exactly the kind of polycrisis environment that has rendered the old VUCA vocabulary insufficient. The world of agribusiness has not merely become more complex. It has become more “polychromatic” – exhibiting multiple, simultaneous frequencies of dis- ruption that interfere with one another in ways that make traditional risk management and scenario plan- ning inadequate tools for navigating what lies ahead. In this global scenario, the world turns with concern to the issue of food security in its various fundamental aspects: availability, access, utilisation and stability, seeking greater food production at lower costs and ensuring access to it for an increasingly large portion of the world’s population. However, this necessary effort faces an unexpected challenge: a process we can call “deglobalisation”, stemming from a growing wave of neoprotectionism, a crisis of multilateralism, leading to a weakening of the role of the World Trade Organization, hindering the global integration of food chains, and resulting in higher costs for end consumers while reducing pro- ducers’ profits. Neoprotectionism manifested itself in the form of non-tariff barriers, sometimes disguised as countries’ concerns about environmental issues. Regulatory divergence in biotech approval timelines, food safety standards, and sustainability labelling requirements is creating an increasingly fragmented and costly compliance landscape for producers and exporters operating across multiple markets. Despite these difficulties, the challenge of food secu- rity remains central as the global population continues to grow, and millions of people remain vulnerable. With a particular focus on tropical agriculture, new technologies capable of increasing productivity are becoming indispensable. However, despite technologi- cal advances, the challenge of balancing sustainability with economic viability persists. Emerging environmen-
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