Agriculture in South America

Breadbasket of the World?

Emergence of Agriculture
Historical shift in global agriculture is
taking place
Heart of this dominance has long been the
United States
But South America is emerging as the
worlds bread basket
Why?
Reasons for Growth in South American
Agriculture
New techniques and technology are being used to
bring formerly unusable and barren lands into
productivity
Part of the Green Revolution- hybrid and disease
resistant seeds, fertilizers, pesticides
Economics is a factor: new demands from an
increasingly sophisticated high end market and
vegetarian habits/organic products
Demand includes traditional crops (soybeans) as
well as specialized: radicchio, endive, asparagus,
bok choy, artichokes, avocados and citrus
Demand for meat from protein hungry Chinese
middle class
Brazil
Chief among the
producers is the nation
of Brazil
Abundant land
Significant farming
population-labor
issue
Mato Grosso, Brazil
Location of Brazils cerrado
Brazils cerrado (www.agbrazil.com)
Brazilian Portuguese word cerrado (tropical high plains)
translates to "closed, inaccessible wasteland
Brazil's high-plains, the cerrados, cover an estimated 207
million hectares, or about one-fourth of the country. All
but a small area lies south of the equator.
From a US perspective, the cerrados equal 26% of the
area of the lower 48 states--more than 510 million
acres--an area larger than the US east of the Mississippi
River, excluding Florida.
The area that can be cropped is estimated at about 120
million hectares.
Only about 50 million ha, less than one-fourth of the
cerrados, is now economically used. Of that, dryland and
irrigated crops cover about 20 million ha. The rest is in
pasture.
The region began to open in the 1960s with the building
of Brasilia, the new capital city
Brazils cerrado
First commercial agriculture enterprises to start up in the
cerrados were extensive livestock operations
Changed dramatically in late 1970s with the
development of the "tropical" soybean and with new
techniques for managing cerrado soils
Viable crop agriculture in the cerrados brought a mass
population movement into the region. Most of the
migrants were farmers from southern states of Brazil
Cheap land was the attraction; for every hectare of land
they sold elsewhere, they could buy 10 to 40 hectares in
the cerrados.
At the outset of the migration in the early 1980s, a
hectare of Western Bahia land could be bought for the
equivalent of the price of a pack of cigarettes. Today,
virgin land sells for US$250 or less per hectare.