The first item in those agendas is the permanent aim of production efficiency in agriculture. In the recent past, it has opened the possibility of three harvests in the same crop year, and today it ensures constant growth in crop and animal productivity and successive harvest records. It was defined, in 1970, as the main justification to reform the structure of federal agricultural research and transform the former National Department of Agricultural Research and Experimentation (DNPEA), at the Ministry of Agriculture, into a company, Embrapa.

That year, the document "Targets and Foundations for Government Action" established as one its four top priorities the promotion of a "revolution in agriculture and food supply". It set out to create, in Brazil's traditional agricultural areas of the South and Southeast and in the new areas of the Midwest, North and Northeast, an agriculture that is strong in production and competitive in terms of costs, while succeeding in both ending internal supply crises and conquering markets that import food, energy and fibers.

The second strategic agenda is the constant aim for scientific excellence in the development of knowledge and technologies, that is, the ability to go across cutting-edge areas of knowledge to ensure the supply of more sophisticated and precise technologies that are crucial to keep Brazilian farms competitive against competitors in developed countries.

This strategic agenda was in fact defined before Embrapa was created, in the historical "Black Book" [Livro Preto], the nickname for the document that proposed the reform of the agricultural research system and the creation of the corporation. The diagnosis at the time showed the scarcity of human resources with enough training to face the scientific challenges of the undertaking and recommended the establishment of a comprehensive postgraduate training program in the main centers of scientific excellence of the world and the necessary continuous effort to modernize laboratories and experimental fields.

The third strategic agenda is the constant concern with the rational use of natural resources and with environmental conservation, which can be described as a search for “sustainable production” in more current terms. Unlike the previous ones, it was not an order from government planning: it was already an established practice in DNPEA's research program and in agricultural research institutes, because it is an essential condition to production efficiency, given that disfunctions such as soil erosion or high expenses with agrochemicals compromise the efficiency of agricultural production.

In fact, scientists' concern with the impacts of production on natural resources influenced state planning to the extent that, in 1970, the Radam Project was created to inventory the mineral resources, vegetation, and land suitability and land use in the Amazon region; and in 1973, the Special Secretariat of Environment was instituted to provide guidelines for environmental conservation and the rational use of natural resources. The environment as an issue for urban society would only emerge in the 1980s with the advent of non-governmental organizations dedicated to the subject.

The fourth strategic agenda is the concern with reducing social and economic inequalities that compose the rural poverty scenario in Brazil. Traditionally associated with issues of access to land and of rural-urban migrations from Brazil's North and Northeast to the Southeast (either due to climate disasters like droughts or simply due to the absence of jobs and income), such demands would be addressed to policymakers in charge of public policies like agrarian reform and social welfare, for instance.

Technological solutions for the problem of rural poverty only became a clear demand from society for agricultural research starting from the 1990s, when, as Tropical Agriculture was consolidated, it became evident that access to technology (and not land ownership or labor) started to be the determinant factor for the generation and appropriation of wealth in the fields, with two antagonistic results: the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few and the subsequent social and productive exclusion of other farmers.