The Ministry of Agriculture has yet another record for Brazilian agribusiness.
Through the sector, the country earned almost US$123 billion from exports made between January and September.
About 200 countries received food and several items elaborated from other raw materials from the field to reach this amount.
WITHOUT SEEING ANY DIFFERENCES
The products are sent to both American capitalists and Chinese communists. There is no distinction, not even by religion.
Just as the industry supplies Jews in Israel and Catholics in the Vatican, it also provides food to Hindus in India, Buddhists in Nepal, and various Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, etc.
A good portion of the tourists attending the World Cup in Qatar must eat, for example, Brazilian chicken meat sold to the Muslim-majority country.
Throughout the year, about 83 million kilos of this type of protein have already been sent from Brazil to Qatar.
The Qataris, however, are not even in the top ten countries that have bought chicken meat from Brazil.
China is Brazil’s largest customer: 410 million kilograms this year. The United Arab Emirates (350 million kilos) and Japan (315 million kilos) are in the second and third positions.
The list comprises about 160 destinations, including countries and autonomous territories.
Among them is Taiwan, which does not agree to submit to the Chinese government. That is: Brazil’s agribusiness does not exclude anyone among the populations that need to import food.
From January to September 2022, Brazilian producers sent the world 3.5 billion kilos of chicken protein.
THE FLAGSHIP
Adding all products together, Brazil’s agribusiness exported almost 180 million tons around the globe.
The flagship product is the soybean complex, made up of raw soybeans, oil, and meal – around half of all shipments are made on Brazilian soil.
Once again, China is the leading buyer: 47 million tons, approximately. The customers, however, are not limited to the giant.
Even though it is critical, the European Union has not given up on Brazilian soy. Altogether, the 27 member countries of the bloc were the second destination for shipments of the Brazilian soybean complex to the foreign market: 13 million tons.
Not even France was left out. The country governed by Emmanuel Macron ranked fifth among importers of the Brazilian soybean complex and 14th on the list of a hundred destinations.
AND THERE IS MORE
In addition, data from the United States Department of Agriculture show that Brazilian agribusiness is the leading global supplier of several items.
According to the folder’s data, the country leads global exports of soybeans, corn, coffee, beef and chicken, sugar, and orange juice in 2022.
This position is accompanied by leadership in preservation. Two-thirds of the entire territory is preserved.
On average, Brazilian conservation areas cover about 50% of agricultural areas.
On average, Brazilian farmers preserve 50% of their property – the percentage, determined by law, varies according to the state: in São Paulo, for example, it is 20%; in the Amazon, 80%.
It does not occur anywhere else on the planet.
INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION
The legislation is so comprehensive that it is praised internationally, even by the most demanding blocks.
A recent case occurred during an interview given by Ignacio Ybá, the European Union ambassador in Brazil, to issue 127 of the Oeste magazine.
“We recognize Brazil’s legal framework, particularly the Forest Code, is very positive,” the diplomat commented. “Brazil’s environmental legislation is exemplary.”
When the subject is ESG, the acronym that has recently come into use to classify companies that value environmental preservation and sustainability, the country’s rural production already takes all the practices by legal requirement.
All that is missing is a system capable of keeping the history proving the good practices, as explained by Nelson Ananais, Sustainability coordinator of the National Confederation of Agriculture.
“The ESG in agribusiness in Brazil is not something for the next decade; it is an action that has been worked on for at least ten years with the sustainable development of agriculture, the guarantee of food safety linked to environmental preservation and compliance with labor laws and social issues,” he explains.
“We have been carrying out the ESG agenda for almost ten years with the development of low-carbon agriculture, for 40 years with the Forest Code, and 50 years with the transformation of Brazil into a country that guarantees its own food security and still exports food.”
THE GREAT TRUTH
Studies by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) show that Brazil feeds at least 800 million human beings around the planet. In other words, more than 10% of the world’s population.
The country manages to do this so efficiently and cheaply that it emerges as the great power to ensure food security to the world.
And even with this expansion position, there is still national potential to increase the amount of food produced without expanding the area occupied by agriculture and cattle raising.
The key to this process is the Crop-Livestock-Forest Integration technique, advocated by Embrapa.
Through this management, the rotation between agriculture and cattle is done to improve production optimization and the recovery of degraded areas.
When learning about this production model, in 2021, Englishman Alok Sharma, who chaired the United Nations Climate Change Conference that year, said that the world needs this innovation.
“I’m talking here from Embrapa Cerrados, just outside Brasilia, where innovative, low-carbon technologies are helping increase Brazil’s agricultural productivity by avoiding harmful deforestation and creating green jobs for Brazilians,” he said in a video posted on Twitter.
Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said that the world needs Brazilian agriculture. The speech occurred when she visited the country in April this year.
“I know that the world cannot survive without Brazilian agriculture,” said Ngozi during a meeting with the Parliamentary Front for Agribusiness.
“We need to think about the future challenges, not only of Brazil but of the whole world. I am excited about what Brazil says about the environmental area and productive technologies with decarbonization potential.”
With information from Revista Oeste