Thursday 29 March 2012

Brazil the food bowl of the World 29/3/12

Brazil!! All I can say what a country. Our first arrival was to a little Dairy farm in Sao Jose Do Rio Preto and the dairy was only 20 Ha, but were running 115 mixed cows because of their cell grazing system.

Brazil's average rainfall is between 1000 to 2000ml of rain depending on where you live. Brazil has 400,000,000 ha of land that is being used for agriculture which is 47% of it's production where they are still developing more land for agriculture. It has a population of 220 million people and the average person gets paid $20 to $30 per day.

Farm size varies from 4ha right up to 95,000 ha. Sugar Cane is expanding rapidly. Their sugar industry produced 350 million tonnes of sugar last year and they have predicted a record crop of 500 million tonnes for this year. They have 200 million head of cattle and say they can triple their cattle numbers but they don't want to flood the market. But most important key to their future success is the amount of water in Brazil,it is 12% of the world's fresh water. One thing that the land is lacking a lot of phosphorus where most farmers have to apply between 120 to 800 kg to the hectare. Brazil's infrastructure still needs some developing as well. I believe this country is going to feed the world!!



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