Luiz Carlos Pinheiro Machado (1928-2020)

Profession and recognitions:

• Graduated in Agronomy from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in 1950
• Doctorate in Agronomy by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in 1959
• Professor at the Universidad Católica de Argentina, (1974/78)
• Invited teacher at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (1974/80)
• Participating teacher of mastery in Agroecosystems of UFSC
• Assistant professor at CCA / UFSC 1980
• Full professor CCA / UFSC 1994
• Jubilee Professor of Special Animal Science at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
• Teacher and teacher of the first discipline of Ethology in Latin America (1980) for the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences
• Senior Adviser to the Chilean Patagonia Improvement Program
• Senior adviser on agricultural development projects in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia and Paraguay
• President of the Corporación Brasileña de Investigación Agropecuaria (Embrapa) (May 1985 / April 1986)
• Founder (1955) and president of the Brazilian Pig Breeders Association
• Founder of the André Voisin Institute (1970)
• President of the Sociedad de Agronomía of Rio Grande do Sul (1963/64)
• President of the Federation of Associations of Agricultural Engineers of Brazil – FAEAB – (1983/84)
• Agronomic Merit in Brazil (1983)
• Legislative Council of Santa Catarina (2013)
• Medal of Merit of the Confea / Crea and Mutual System (2015) 

Luiz Carlos Pinheiro Machado, also known as Pinheirão, born on July 3, 1928. Thrilled by his priest, Dulph Pinheiro Machado, who was a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), graduated in Agronomy in the Misma universidad en 1950. Ready to start teaching as a full professor in the Animal Science 1 – Cattle, Poultry, Poultry and Animal Nutrition, in the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary of Rio Grande do Sul in 1952. Y a lo largo de los años, he became “professor libre” (Doctorate at that time) in 1959 and professor in 1961 in the same university. As a teacher, he worked with Epagri (formerly Acaresc) to train technicians in breeding bristles, gaining lechero and animal nutrition in Santa Catarina. Since he had an area in Taquara / RS, present in a small town, he felt obliged to implement a nursery production project. In 1964, representatives of the dictatorship decided to expel him from UFRGS, carrying out amnesty for the activity in 1979. So, he made a trip to France, knowing the work of André Voisin and just returning to Brazil. he installed a model following the “universal laws of rational pastoring” enunciated by Voisin, speaking to the speaker and discussing the model with his colleague Nilo Romero, another pioneer in the application of Voisin’s ideas. During this time, I paid more attention to “Fazenda Alegria”, improving and carrying out experiments to formulate the idea of ​​Pastoral Racional Voisin, but also received several visits and courses in their own right, including carrying out experiments at UFRGS and the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). He also wrote several books, such as Manual do Leiteiro (1968) and Os Suínos (1967, in Portuguese and Spanish). The book The Swine, was highlighted by the influence that it provoked in the diet of the Brazilians, which started to consume more meat of cerdo in the years 60.

Political activism is another highlight of Luiz Carlos Pinheiro Machado’s trajectory. In 1945 he joined the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and was active in the student movement during the post-war period. As a teacher, he was seen as an expressive leader for students, for this reason he was expunged in 1964. From this experience, Luiz Carlos summed up: “I militated as a teacher because I believe that if the professional has an ideology, he has a horizon in life.” from the 1990s, he was professor of several MST courses (at technical, undergraduate, specialization and master’s levels) and closely followed the implementation of hundreds of PVR projects in Agrarian Reform settlements across the country.

In the 70s, through the Pujol Project in São Paulo, Pinheirão verified the death of cattle due to an unknown cause, and the presence of soil in the rumen of the animals was discovered, and from the observation of behavior, he verified the social dominance, which made with the access of subordinates to be done after the dominant ones, when the water presented soil suspension and manure from the dominant ones, when the teacher proposed drinking fountains in paddocks, this being his first contact with ethology. With that, on a trip to France, he got to know ethology works, which inspired him to teach the first discipline of ethology for agricultural sciences courses in Latin America at UFSC. The discipline was formed after the amnesty, in 1980, from the contact with professors Mário Luiz Vincenzi (Head of the Zootechnics department at UFSC) and José Antônio Ribas Ribeiro (Director of the Center for Agricultural Sciences – CCA / UFSC), who were students of Pinheirão at UFRGS.

His work while in the presidency of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), between 1985 and 1986, was marked by the fight against corruption, but efforts were also made to install Ethology in Brazil, such as the attempt to create a Research Center in Ethology and Animal Welfare, in addition to bringing Andrew Fraser in some units of Embrapa to talk about Ethology. However, there was a lot of resistance from researchers at the institution.

In 1970 he co-promoted one of the first agroecology movements in Brazil, and between 1983 and 1984, while presiding over the Federation of Associations of Agricultural Engineers of Brazil (Faeab), he helped promote organic agriculture and agroecology. A defender of the production of food without pesticides, Luiz Carlos fought against the use of poisons in Brazilian agriculture. Subject addressed in his book The dialectic of agroecology – Contribution to a world with food without poison (2014, in Portuguese and Spanish) written with his son, Luiz Carlos Pinheiro Machado Filho, founder and coordinator of our research center.

The Alegría Project, before its abandonment in 2002, was a PRV laboratory that, due to the knowledge produced there during more than 3 decades of disciplined and constantly evolving work, allowed Professor Pinheiro to write the work of agricultural literature entitled Pastoreo Racional Voisin – Agroecological Technology for the Third Millennium (2010, in Portuguese and Spanish), initially written in the late 1990s in Portuguese and later edited and translated into Spanish at the beginning of the 21st century, and since then thousands of copies have been reproduced and sold to throughout the world, even today, in fact more current than ever. This became practically the manual for all interested farmers, whether in organic farming, which would be ideal, and if not, at least to minimize their production costs and maximize the productivity of their production.

In addition to teaching, the writing of technical-scientific articles has always been part of the agronomist’s routine, who has published more than 400 articles in newspapers with national and international circulation, in addition to 225 projects aimed at rural areas. He recognizes all this dedication to research, teaching and social development. He has been the auditorium of 40 groups of agronomists at various Brazilian universities, as well as being awarded prizes and distinctions. Among them, Agronomic Merit in Brazil, in which he was the only one unanimously elected, in 1983, the Commendation of the Catarinense Legislative (2013), in consideration of the important academic trajectory and long-standing political militancy and more recently, in 2015, nominated by the Federal Council of Engineering and Agronomy (Confea) to receive the Medal of Merit for the Confea / Crea e Mútua System.

In total, he carried out 223 PRV projects, covering more than 100,000 hectares, not only in Brazil, but also in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Paraguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Spain, France, Italy, among others. His last PRV course was held at the beginning of 2020, in the State of Mato Grosso, Brazil.

At 11:30 pm on July 2, 2020, thirty minutes before his 92nd birthday, he passed away from complications from SARS-COV-2 (coronavirus), ending a life of beautiful teachings and leaving a legacy for the production of clean and healthy food for the preservation of the planet.

For more information about Professor Pinheirão, see the videos available on the YouTube playlist:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBLgAdcuSpVwDgquN6pYKPLFebqAqhAWy

Para obtener más información sobre sus publicaciones, acceda a su  Lattes:
http://lattes.cnpq.br/0157449555633368

Y para conocer más sobre la “Fazenda Alegría”, lea los textos que el propio profesor redactó para el I y III Encuentro Panamericano de Manejo Agroecológico de Pasturas (2011 e 2018):
http://revistas.aba-agroecologia.org.br/index.php/cad/article/view/12711/7025
http://cadernos.aba-agroecologia.org.br/index.php/cadernos/article/view/2534/2255