Brazil – as food superpower in The Economist

Continuing with AGRI FOOD THNK TANK analysis of what we consider the most promising food producer in the world, we share a couple of analysis made by The Economist during last week. The leading economic magazine. The Economist describes in two recent releases the current situation of Brazil as food producer. Both notes have interesting data on available land, current infrastructure development and potential of the new agricultural frontiers. Brazil has more spare farmland than any other country (see chart 3). The FAO puts its total potential arable land at over 400m hectares; only 50m is being used. Brazilian official figures put the available land somewhat lower, at 300m hectares.

Brazil alone (population: 190m) has as much renewable water as the whole of Asia (population: 4 billion). And again, this is not mainly because of the Amazon. Piauí is one of the country’s driest areas but still gets a third more water than America’s corn belt. Of course, having spare water and spare land is not much good if they are in different places (a problem in much of Africa). But according to BrasilAgro, Brazil has almost as much farmland with more than 975 millimetres of rain each year as the whole of Africa and more than a quarter of all such land in the world.

In the second release The Economist brieflyiexplains why In less than 30 years Brazil has turned itself from a food importer into one of the world’s great breadbaskets It is the first country to have caught up with the traditional “big five” grain exporters (America, Canada, Australia, Argentina and the European Union). It is also the first tropical food-giant; the big five are all temperate producers.

SecondPressReleaseTheEconomist

Last but not least, in this third press release a detailed analysis of the current situation of the ethanol and sugar cane industry in Brazil also posted by The Economy during the past week.

ThirdPressReleaseTEconomist