AGRICULTURE IN BRAZIL

From the earliest years of the colonial era, agriculture has held center stage in Brazil's economy. Plantation agriculture was the country's link to the world economy. The agrarian economy was based on large holdings dedicated to a single export crop and dependent on slave labor for its production. Beginning with sugar cultivation in the 16th century, the country's economic trends have been susceptible to a series of boom-bust agricultural cycles. Cotton, cocoa, rubber, and coffee followed sugar.

The 1970's saw a general rise in the number of agricultural products exported. Soybeans outpaced Brazil's traditional agricultural earners - coffee, cocoa, and sugar. The volume, value, and variety of semi-processed and manufactured agricultural products increased substantially, largely as a result of government incentives favoring processed goods over raw crops.

Agriculture in the 1980's continued to play a significant role in the country's economy, but no longer did a single crop dominate in the way sugar, coffee, or rubber had at their peaks. Through fiscal incentives and special credit facilities, the Federal Government strongly promoted greater efficiency in rural areas. Furthermore, efforts were made to alter the movement of people from rural communities to urban areas by extending equal social benefits, establishing rational schemes for agrarian reform, stimulating hitherto uneconomical small holdings and, in general, improving the quality of life in areas that are quite remote from the main centers. Between 1980 and 1993 farm output grew between 3.4 percent and 4 percent per annum. This has permitted Brazilian farmers not only to produce more for the domestic market, but also to increase their exports.

In the late l990's Brazil is still the world's largest producer of coffee and sugar (from sugarcane), second among soyubean and kidney bean producers, third largest producer of corn, and fourth in cocoa production. The various programs undertaken in the last two decades to promote diversification of crops have borne impressive results. The production of grains has grown consistently, including wheat, rice, corn, and particularly soybeans. Forest products, especially rubber (once a vital element in Brazilian exports), as well as Brazil nuts, cashews, waxes, and fibers, now come mostly from cultivated plantations and no longer from wild forest trees as in earlier days. Thanks to its wide climatic range, Brazil produces almost every kind of fruit, from tropical varieties in the north (various nuts and avocados) to an enormous output of citrus fruit and grapes in the temperate regions of the south. In 1997, Brazil contributed 32 percent of the world's global production of oranges, the largest in the world. During the past twenty years, oranges have become an important export crop especially in the form of concentrated juice. Brazil ranked second among beef production countries worldwide and its herd is the second largest in the world. The overwhelming majority of cattle - around 80 percent - are raised for beef. Dairy herds account for the remaining 20 percent.