"When I was in college, my professors stated
that soy, for example, was a temperate climate plant, that it could only grow in
the south of the country,” stated agronomist Edson Lobato, a researcher retired
from the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and winner of the
World Food Prize in 2006. The cerrado is largely similar to the African
savannahs, having defined drought and rain periods, average annual temperatures
of around 25° Celsius, soil with elevated acidity and a dearth of nutrients.
Lobato started working in research in the
1960s. "At that time, people told me not to waste time with that,” he said. His
and other researchers’ and entrepreneurs’ "waste of time” caused soy production
in the region to jump from 310,000 tons in 1975 to 36 million tons today, or
60% of the national production. Brazil is currently the second largest producer
and exporter of the oleaginous grain. In the same period, maize crops have risen
from 2.8 million tons to 17 million, and bean crops have risen from 300,000 to
1.2 million tons, just to mention some crops.
The cerrado, according to Lobato, also
concentrates 89% of the national cotton production, 81% of the sorghum, 59% of
the coffee, 55% of the cattle beef, 45% of the beans, 44% of the maize and 37%
of the rice. According to the agronomist, between 1975 and 2000 this development
has caused an annual reduction of 5% in the average cost of food.
Regional development
"In the state of
Mato Grosso
(in
Midwestern Brazil),
average soy production is greater than in the United States, the main world
producer,” stated the head of the Embrapa's Cerrado Department, Roberto Teixeira. Today the state, formerly dominated by extensive cattle farming, is the main soy
and cotton producer in Brazil, with 30% and 46.5% of the national production
respectively. Cattle farming is still strong, but is no longer the main
activity: there are 26.8 million heads of cattle, or 13.5% of the Brazilian
cattle herd.
Goiás,
also in the Midwest, is another example. Producers from the state answer to 10%
of the Brazilian grain production, being the state in the third place in the
rank of cotton and soy producers. The state is also the third main producer of
garlic, the second milk producer and the main tomato producer. "It is possible
to produce anything in the cerrado: vegetables, fruit, sunflower, barley, wheat,
etc.,” pointed out Lobato.
Goiás has also become a great producer of
poultry. Perdigão, for example, forecasts that in a short period of time, the
state will be the main production hub. Last year poultry was the fifth main
export product from Goiás, with sales to the Middle East too.
The
West of
Bahia, in the northeast of the country, is another example, as it stands
out in the coffee sector and now has the main irrigated coffee productivity in
the world. The state has innovated in a sector in which Brazil was already the
main producer and exporter. The region attracts not only producers, but also
industrial enterprises. Galvani, in the fertilizer sector, for example, has
built an industrial unit there. "We are the only fertilizer industry installed
there. We went there in 1993, at the start of production, and we grew together,”
stated company president Rodolfo Galvani.
The cerrado biome occurs in various states in
Brazil, especially in the Midwest (Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul and Goiás),
but it is also present in the states of Tocantins (in the North), Minas Gerais
(in the Southeast), Bahia, Piauí and Maranhão (all in the Northeast). There are
also cerrado areas in Ceará (in the Northeast), Pará, Amazonas, Rondônia,
Roraima and Amapá (in the North) and even in São Paulo (in the Southeast).
The cerrado has an area of 207 million
hectares, or 24% of the Brazilian territory, being 139 million areas on which it
is possible to produce, according to the Embrapa. Currently, 14 million hectares
are farmed with annual plants, like soy, cotton and maize, another 3.5 million
are occupied by perennial crops, like coffee and fruit, and 60 million are used
for cultivated grazing land.
When, in the 1970s, in the early days of the
Embrapa, the government decided to invest heavily in research to develop the
region, the idea was to incorporate 3 million hectares to national agriculture.
"Thirty years ago nobody believed in the cerrado, the land was worth nothing,”
stated Roberto Teixeira.
Investment, research and
entrepreneurialism
From then on, the development of agricultural
production took place based on three pillars: "research, public and private
investment and entrepreneurialism”. With the research developed by Embrapa and
other institutions it was possible to make agriculture viable from the technical
point of view. "Up to then, the history of agriculture in Brazil consisted
mainly of deforestation of fertile areas and use until they were depleted,”
recalled Lobato.
The first step was development of techniques
for correction of the acidity of the soil, with the use of lime, and correct
fertilization. “The technology generation process was fast,” stated Lobato.
"There was no example of success in lands like these anywhere in the world,” he
added. Entrepreneurialism, then, was an important factor.
The first cooperatives in the cerrado region,
for example, were established by producers from the South and Southeast of the
country. "At the time, highways were opened and electric networks were installed
by the farmers themselves,” stated the president of the Organization of
Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB), Márcio Lopes de Freitas. And investment continued.
The Maggi Group, one of the largest companies in Brazilian agribusiness, for
example, built the Madeira-Amazonas Waterway, inaugurated in 1997, to transfer
part of the state of Mato Grosso’s agricultural production to the North of
Brazil.
"The success of the cerrado, and specifically
of Mato Grosso, was due to professionals, people who wanted to win,” added Pedro
Valente, production manager of the Agro division at Maggi.
Private organizations also played their part
in research. One example is Mato Grosso Foundation, established by farmers in
the 1980s, which works in the genetic improvement of soy. Development of seeds
that were more resistant to pests and adverse conditions were other important
steps in the development of agriculture in the cerrado. "The Embrapa and Mato
Grosso Foundation development of seeds, permitted the production of soy in Mato
Grosso,” added Valente.
Other techniques were developed, among them
"biological nitrogen fixing in soy culture”. Introduced in 1981, it consists of
the use of bacteria that removes nitrogen form the air, fixes it in the earth
and transfers it to the plant, eliminating the need for chemical nitrogen in
fertilization. "The process is currently used in 23 million hectares in Brazil,
i.e., it s also outside the cerrado, and provides an economy of R$ 750 million
(approximately US$ 350 million) a year,” stated Roberto Teixeira.
The integration of crops and livestock farming
was another procedure considered important by the Embrapa. It consists in the
use of part of the grazing lands for the plantation of crops, with rotation of
cultures. That is, when a farmer is raising cattle on one part of his farm, he
plants crops on another. Direct planting is also a strategy that is greatly
used, in which seeds are planted on the remains of the previous crop, without
the need for ploughing the land. "This way you conserve the soil, avoid erosion
and maintain nutrients,” stated Teixeira.
Another, developed more recently, is
agricultural zoning, which consists in identifying the best place for the
plantation of a specific product through soil sensing. "This is one of the tools
developed by the Embrapa that provided the best return and started being used in
large scale in 1997,” said Teixeira. New irrigation techniques are also in use.
For professionals
"It is not agriculture for amateurs,” pointed
out Lobato. "The time in which a person could survive by harvesting 25 bags of
soy per hectare has gone. Nowadays, to cover costs, it is necessary to harvest
45 and, to have a return over investment, 54 bags,” he added.
Nowadays, according to Lobato, average
productivity is 2.8 tons of soy per hectare. In the United States it is 2.65
tons. But here “good producers” can harvest as much as 4.2 or 4.5 tons per
hectare. In the case of maize, it is the same, the average is four tons per
hectare, but "good producers", according to the agronomist, may harvest as much
as 11. And the good news is that research shows that it is possible to reach
productivity of 7.5 tons per hectare in the case of soy and 17 in the case of
maize.
Specialists say that with the use of existing
techniques and with the management of explored areas, without the need for
deforestation, it is possible to significantly expand production. This will be
the theme of the second article in the ANBA series about agriculture in the
cerrado.
The phrase – ‘in this land, whatever is planted will
grow’, - originally from a letter written to the king of Portugal in 1500 by Pero Vaz de Caminha, to describe the recently discovered Brazil, may be adapted
to the cerrado, the country’s savannah. With research, investment and
entrepreneurialism, the region, which was considered improper for agriculture,
now has one of the greatest levels of productivity in the world and answers to
54% of the Brazilian production of grain. Today
