Farmers in Brazil are aggressively re-investing their profits this year, and looking to improve productivity rather than just expand acreage. The spending is based on a belief that agricultural prices will remain high, and also the strength of Brazil’s hard-won economic stability. Jose Carlos Vaz, director of agribusiness at Brazil’s top agricultural lender, Banco do Brasi, said, “We see a new wave of optimism to invest. Everything indicates that the (price) level we will settle at will be higher in the coming years.” The world’s number-two food producer after the United States has roughly 120 million spare hectares of land it could turn too, but officials say they want to focus more on boosting output on existing farmland, in part due to environmental concerns. Brazil already has a global reputation for being a pioneer in cultivating nonnative crops and raising yields in a mostly tropical climate. The country’s agricultural research unit Embrapa, with nearly 2,000 PhD researchers and a US$1 billion annual budget, is mostly to thank. While existing technology could make yields soar if it were applied throughout the agricultural sector, Embrapa hopes to boost yields even further in the future through the use of nanotechnology and advanced genetics projects.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/us-brazil-agriculture-idUSTRE74I33H20110519