Brazil's agricultural miracle | Hacker News Reader

Brazil's agricultural miracle

economist.com

46 pointscwan26 comments

Some points (from a "farmer")

- Brazil is a third world country.

- labor is dirt cheap

- on visits to Brazil, the level of human labor in agriculture is stunning. (Not possible in US at current wages). Compare Japanese automated factories to Chinese factories.

- subsidies (perhaps) not needed because some inputs (labor) is so cheap

- This is fantastic for Brazil.

I can't defend subsidies, and I don't know very many who can. However, it's part of the game now in the US, so you'd be a fool not to take advantage of them.

- corn prices (adjusted for inflation) are half of what they were in the 70's (http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_Articles/Corn_I...), while oil (a huge input to agriculture) is 3x as expensive (http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/historical...)

- Dry land agriculture is going to explode.

- drought resistance corn is going to increase the area of arable land in the US. (The west is relatively dry, we have a lot of "less productive" range land that could be used for agriculture. (Our land is right in that margin, all land is currently in soybeans and it is no-till.) Previous years (80's/90's) it was a mix of corn, oats, barley, sunflowers, wheat, sorghum, flax and some soybeans. - The last few years have seen record harvests. A combination of good weather and excellent crop varieties is probably the cause.

- Ag Input prices have soared recently.

- Improvements in chemicals have made no-till a viable option.

- The main problem is weed control. Canada Thistle, etc, roundup ready crops are an amazing feat of engineering.

On being green.

- Our farm hasn't seen so much wildlife since the 70's/80's.

- Verdant fields support way more wildlife than native prairie. However, there is still plenty of land that for other reasons, terrain, etc is used for grazing, hay production.

- We had our land in the conversation reserve program (http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/crp/) for quite some time. Now, crop prices make that ridiculous.

- Suburban chemical runoff is a faster growing problem then farm runoff. Chemicals are extremely expensive, so with new high tech methods, each part of the field gets the precise amount of chemical needed. Contrast this to urban/suburban runoff: http://www.chesapeakebay.net/landuse_urbansuburban.aspx?menu... "Unlike many farmers using nutrient management plans, suburban residents often over-apply fertilizer to their lawns and gardens."

It's my impression that the genetically modified crops lack in taste. It's true that we can end up producing more food per acre with them but it seems that one price is on the taste. My anecdotal experience in Germany is that organic food there tastes better than organic food in the U.S. and is much better than the standard supermarket food in the U.S.

As a farmer, what are your thoughts on this? Also, I wonder if we are getting into a chemical arms race with nature. Roundup resistant weeds now exist. Now there is a new Roundup. Does the ecology suffer and us from this arms race?

GM crops only lack taste if they are designed with other goals in mind. For example, the McGregor tomatoes are infamous for looking great, having a long shelf life, and tasting like cardboard. I think it's possible to have a high-yield crop that tastes good, if the market can convince the growers (who convince the labs) that it's important.

Unfortunately in the U.S. looks matter more than taste. I guess it's the wonders of advertising. Thanks for your answer.

I am always fascinated by agriculture, but know very little about it. Do you know any books or other media that would be a good introduction to agriculture? I'm looking for something that explains what crops are good where, how many times you can plant a year, etc.

"- Brazil is a third world country.

- labor is dirt cheap"

Land is as well, which is why Americans are moving down there, buying up land, and going for it:

http://politics.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2008/06/25/am...

Other things are more expensive: Money (interest rates are higher); Transport (infrastructure is a lot worse); Equipment (because of a combination of high taxes and import duties); Security (there's a higher risk of having equipment and produce stolen); Fuel.

Corn is half of the price of the 70's, but you probably has more than the double of the productivity.

You ain't seen nothing yet: Brazil is currently using only 16% of its arable land. It has 65 million hectares in use of a total of 394 million (http://www.viniart.com.br/lucioWhybrasil/whyBrasil.aspx?m=2&...).

Things started to get really interesting when Brazilian farmers stopped using european methods, thanks to research at Embrapa (http://www.embrapa.br/).

Yes. I have to find out how no-till agriculture works. (See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming)

The following two sentences seemed a bit self-contradictory.

"They like agricultural research but loathe genetically modified (GM) plants."

"As the briefing explains, Brazil’s progress has been underpinned by the state agricultural-research company and pushed forward by GM crops."

Does anyone know if GM crops did play an important role in their newfound agricultural efficiency, or did they find major wins in other areas?

"They (they agro-pessimists) like agricultural research but loathe genetically modified (GM) plants."

A little light on details of what the miracle was.

The link to the longer article is a little hidden, but it does go on to explain it in alot more detail:

http://www.economist.com/node/16886442

Their share of the worlds agriculture is honestly staggering. To be #1 in OJ, sugar, coffee, chickens, etc. is unbelievable.

Don't forget that a large portion of Africa has the climate and soil of Brazil. If we (Brazilians) export this technology to Africa it would: feed all the humanity for years to come, reduce Africa poverty, and be a great source of biofuel.

This is misleading: "It is not too much to talk about a miracle, and one that has been achieved without the huge state subsidies that prop up farmers in Europe and America. "

In the linked article: http://www.economist.com/node/16886442 "According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), state support accounted for 5.7% of total farm income in Brazil during 2005-07. That compares with 12% in America,"

"Of course there are myriad reasons why its way of farming will not translate easily, notably that its success was achieved at a time when the climate was relatively stable whereas now uncertainty looms."

This seems like a pretty big caveat to me, especially when you look at how many civilizations have collapsed in the past due to exactly this very reason.

Caveat for what exactly? Technological transfer for Africa and Asia tropical climates? Or for the Brazilian agricultural model?

For the second case I can give an opinion, Brazil is a country with a fair amount of climate seasonal variations, where I live in São Paulo we have rainy summers and dry winters, and in the 24 years that I lived there were a fair amount of uncommon events in climate (including hot winters and dry summers), and yet year after year as long I can remember the crop yield rose, both in Brazil and in São Paulo.

I do not see how this can change in the short and mid-terms without a global climate mess that would also affect other countries in the globe.

EDIT: As mkr-hn pointed I do not know the difference between weather and climate, I think that the basic idea still stands.

That's weather, not climate. Climate is something measured over centuries.

Climate is thousands of little weathers collected and analyzed.

It's a caveat for both - the brazilian model, and technological transfer to other climates. However, what I was really thinking of was the idea that Brazil's model represents a resounding answer to malthusian objections. This may be true if a lot of other things pan out, but assuming that climate remains the same is a pretty big assumption.

Brazil — and tropical countries btw -- climate is much more stable than temperate countries. In almost all of Brazil, there's just really two seasons: the rainy one, and the dry. It is less susceptible to climate changes.

Brazil doesn't have to subsidize their farmers, the US takes care of that: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978963,00.ht...

Unbelievable.

There's a grammatical error, I think, that slightly changes the meaning of part of the article.

Second, the Brazilian way of farming is more likely to do good in the poorest countries of Africa and Asia.

I think that the writer actually means "do well" where he says it will "do good". My correction says that there's a good chance that it will be successful elsewhere -- which would also imply his wording, that it would deliver positive results in those regions.

In the sentence, "good" is a noun. You can say "deliver ..." or "achieve positive results", but why use the longer latinate words? It just makes you look like you're trying to look smarter than you are.

No, these are not just different ways of skinning the same cat, the meaning is quite different.

The word "good" is a noun, indicating what will be done. The word "well" is an adverb, and describes how something will be done.

In a contrived example, a sentence like "the raping and pillaging invaders did well" is grammatically and semantically correct (they achieved their goal by getting lots of gold, etc.). A similar sentence "the raping and pillaging invaders did good" is grammatically correct, but the semantics are probably not what you want (they didn't do good, they did evil).

I think you're technically right about the difference between the two, but I'm quite sure the author did mean "do good"... more food would obviously be a good thing for Africa.

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