For Brazil, the Future is Now

As I met with Brazilian farmers and agribusiness leaders, I learned just how much this country has changed since I last visited 13 years ago. Back then American farmers were fascinated, and maybe a little intimidated, by what they were seeing from this budding powerhouse. Brazil was the awakening giant of global ag; were it not for her pitiful roads and non-existent railways, the country just might someday challenge U.S. farmers as top dogs of global farming.

And now? That challenge is staring us in the face.

Growth curve Twenty years ago Brazil embarked on a powerful growth curve in commodity production. The country’s farmers began churning out higher soybean yields, thanks to Embrapa, its marvelous government research organization. The folks there learned how to grow soybeans in tropical conditions; today their yields rival our own.

Meanwhile Brazil has become the world’s largest beef exporter, and was already world leaders in coffee, orange juice, sugar and ethanol. Pork and chicken are not far behind.

“We think we could contribute up to 50% of the food needed for the projected population growth by 2050, but one third is a more reasonable target,” Brazilian minister of agriculture Wagner Rossi told me at a lunch press meeting at his country home near Ribeirao Preto.

Brazil will take on a higher profile when it comes to food production. Brazilian leaders know this. Brazil is no longer anyone‘s colonial doorstop.

They are also keenly sensitive to claims that agriculture is destroying their rainforest. “In the past 20 years we have only increased the cultivated land area in Brazil by 25%, to about 115 million acres,” says Rossi. “In the same period, we have boosted food production by 152%. So what we really have seen is a major efficiency revolution going on in this country.”

There’s no reason this growth won’t continue. Brazil continues to tweak and improve the quality of its research efforts. In this country, research is given more than just lip service. Farmers there are much more informed; they’re becoming more technologically savvy. Third, Brazil has enough water resources to insure sustainable production, even allowing two harvests in one year with some crops.

The biggest change in 13 years is not what’s happened in Brazil, but what’s happened elsewhere. Food shortages and price hikes have become the norm in some parts of the world. Poor planning, bad politics and lack of investment has led to this sorry statistic: A billion people go to bed hungry every day. It’s no wonder people look to Brazil with a new appreciation.

Brazil still has its infrastructure challenges. But what’s new is that the country has China and other countries happily investing to ensure the building of new highways and ports. In about 15 years, infrastructure will no longer be an issue.

Brazil’s greatest advantage? Land. We say they’re not making any more of it, but it sure seems like they are in Brazil. Outside of Brazil, the only new arable land for farming is in Africa, and that has a big fat question mark hovering over it. The next ‘frontier’ you’ll hear about will be in Brazil’s north east region.

“We are in a position to bring 2.5 million acres of cerrado land in to production there, per year,” says Derli Dossa, Head of strategic management for the Ministry of Agriculture. Production growth will begin with soybeans followed by no-till corn and later, poultry and pork, followed by goat meat production. “We're talking about a region that has abundant rainfall,” says Dossa. “Farmers from southern states have migrated there. We have a very important Embrapa office there. We're moving toward the equator, and soybeans require a lot of sunlight, and we can’t use the same varieties in the north as we do in the south.”

It all seems surreal to mention the equator and soybeans in the same breath, but the Brazilians have proven time and again they can do things most of us thought impossible just a generation ago.

"When I was a child, I heard that Brazil was the country of the future," says Luiz Carlos de Oliveira, a farmer and secretary of animal and plant health for the Ministry of Agriculture. "The future is now. We are ready to produce."

After seeing a glimpse of this for myself, I can’t disagree. The country is poised to become the world’s leading commodity producer. That should be just fine with us. The world is going to need all the food it can produce in the next 40 years as we look to double production to feed 9 billion people.