Page 42 - Export or Bust eBook

Barcarena every year. Once the fleet of 92 barges arrives in Barcarena, the crops are loaded onto ocean-
going vessels.

It’s just one of the operations that keeps spurring farmers in Mato Grosso and other states to plant more
every year, but the situation is still far from ideal. Producers still have to get their soybeans and corn
to Miritituba and, so far, the only way is by truck on the unfinished BR-163 highway. It’s
essentially a two-lane road pitted with
potholes and the final 100 kilometers is still
unpaved.

Dirt roads can quickly turn to mud and the
mixture of heavy rains and searing sun creates
stretches of roads that dip and rise that can
make it impossible for trucks to pass.

“Despite all the efforts and good intentions

of the government, we still do not see when

we will have the road 100 percent A treacherous road leading to northern Brazilian ports.
paved,” officials at the Bunge-Amaggi barge

port told Agri-Pulse in e-mail
correspondence. “Therefore, the BR-163 will

continue to be the great brake on grain

transportation in the north and, of course, this will cause immeasurable damage to the entire
Brazilian agribusiness chain, with the loss of foreign exchange and taxes to the country.”

The barge ports in Miritituba have the potential to ship as much 15 million tons of soybeans and corn
per year, but only about half that amount is being sent north, the officials said.

Brazil’s agriculture minister is well aware of the problem and he told Agri-Pulse that he is confident that
the road can be finished in 2020. The government originally hired the wrong companies for the job, he
said, but bureaucratic red tape has snarled the process of replacing them with more competent builders.

Getting on the Grain Train

Even when BR-163 is complete, it will still just be a two-lane road that can easily be shut down by just
one of the many accidents that occur every year. That’s why Brazilian lawmakers are pushing hard

to get presidential approval and environmental clearances to build 621 miles of new railroad track

from the heart of farming country in Mato Grosso to the ports of Miritituba in the northern state

of Pará.

Brazilian Sen. Paulo Rocha, who sat down with Agri-Pulse for an interview in his Senate office in
Brasilia, said there is overwhelming support in Congress for the project, especially now that there is talk
of adding passenger cars to the trains that would carry up to 42 million tons of soybeans, corn, fertilizer,
sugar, ethanol and petroleum per year.

Rocha said getting federal and state approvals for the tracks has been tricky because they would go
through environmentally sensitive and federally protected lands, but most of that work has already been
done.

40 www.Agri-Pulse.com