Brazil Becomes the New Food Superpower

Out here on this seemingly endless tropical savanna, it looks like more bumper crops are rising out of the ruddy earth. Verdant rows of corn and cotton stretch out toward the horizon—this just months after a record harvest of soybeans was cut from the same tracts.

Given the abundance here in the fields, it's hard to believe that these plains were once dismissed as sterile wastelands best left to the emus, armadillos, monkeys, anacondas, and the odd jaguar. The acidic soil was thought to rule out significant farming.

The Brazilians still call these lightly wooded plains the cerrado—or "closed" or "inaccessible" land. But nowadays the cerrado is very much open for business, its fertility a springboard from which the world's newest superpower in agriculture is emerging. "We have been able to transform wasteland into a bountiful land that is helping to feed Brazil and the world," says Silvio Crestana, head of the Brazilian government's agricultural research company, EMBRAPA.

With millions of people literally hungering for affordable food, Brazil's breakthroughs in tropical agriculture may prove to be the key to feeding a growing global population. If Saudi Arabia fills the world's gas stations, China assembles its consumer goods, and India vies to staff its office services, then it is Brazil that is stepping forward to stock its pantries. The rise of Brazil as an agricultural powerhouse may be the most important story of globalization that many Americans have never heard of.

With ample sun and fresh water and more available arable land than any other country, Brazil seems to be on a historic trajectory to becoming the next great global breadbasket. "Brazil can be No. 1 in the future in agricultural production," asserts André Nassar, a leading agricultural economist based in São Paulo. "I think we will exceed the U.S."

If that ambition pans out, Brazil may provide the supply cushion the world urgently needs to meet growing demands for food. China, India, Russia, and other countries are eating higher on the food chain; they want more of the grains and meat Brazil can provide. The same soaring commodity prices that have inflicted so much global pain are creating wealth in Brazil's fast-growing hinterlands. "The crisis is not bad for Brazil. It allows farmers to get a better price," says Derli Dossa, a strategic adviser in the Ministry of