Page 40 - Export or Bust eBook

Meanwhile, China is reaching out to the rest of the
world through new free trade agreements – a trend
that’s forging new tariff-reducing ties between the

EU and Mexico, Japan and Canada, the EU and

Japan and China and the rest of the Pacific Rim.

Largely absent in the international arena is the U.S.,

which withdrew from the TPP after the Trump

administration announced it had no interest in

multilateral trade deals and continues to threaten to pull

out of the NAFTA.

The U.S. farm sector continues to fight U.S. Agri-Pulse's Bill Tomson interviews Brazilian
protectionism, banding together in groups like Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi

Americans Farmers and Families and Farmers for Free

Trade in order to amplify their concerns to the White House and Congress.

It’s a fight on several fronts. Not only are U.S. farmers frustrated over the lack of new free trade
agreements, but the Trump administration’s aggression toward China could give production

powerhouses like Brazil the incentive to grow even faster and become more competitive.

Brazil – the land of untapped potential

American farmers take heed: Brazil is the largest soybean producer and exporter in the world, but the
South American agricultural juggernaut is not operating anywhere near its full potential. Brazilian ag
economists are scrutinizing every available acre in the country that’s bigger than the continental U.S.
and calculating every bushel that could be squeezed out of the vast untapped land.

It won’t happen next year or even in the next five years, but Brazil could easily double the 85
million acres that are now growing soybeans, Maggi said in an hour-long interview at his eighth-floor
office in Brasilia, the country’s capital city.

Soy isn’t the only crop farmers are planting more of, Maggi stressed. Corn production is increasing
almost just as quickly because of Brazil’s ability to double crop. Almost every Brazilian who plants
soybeans as their main crop, plants a second crop of corn – called the “safrinha.”

“The safrinha is getting bigger every year,” Maggi said. “The more soybeans (that farmers plant),
the bigger the safrinha gets. The big difference for us is that we can do two crops.”

Acreage planted with corn has expanded by about 50 percent over the last 15 years, according to a
Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) report, and that’s mostly due to Brazil’s growing second crop

behind a soybean harvest.

Overall, production was down last year in Brazil, but that was mainly due to low prices and a reduction
in corn planting for the first crop.

Maggi, pointing at colorful charts, explained that while more than 66 percent of undeveloped land in
Brazil is off limits for planting because it is considered “environmentally sensitive” and protected by the
federal government, farmers are still only planting on a small portion of what’s available to them.

38 www.Agri-Pulse.com