Why is Brazilian wheat booming?

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Why is Brazilian wheat booming?
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Wheat provides almost one-fifth of the world’s calories and fills up the bellies of the poor. So it is
Graphic detail
worrying
Obituary that global production is expected to fall in 2022 for the first time since 2019. One unlikely
country, however, is bucking the trend. In the first quarter of the year Brazil, a net importer of wheat,
Special reports
exported
Technology 2.2m tonnes of the stuff, more than four times as in the same period a year earlier. That was
Quarterly
despite
Essay poor weather conditions in the south of the country (exacerbated by the La Niña weather pattern),
where 90% of Brazil’s wheat is cultivated. Why are Brazilian farmers growing so much? Could they help
By Invitation
ease the global supply crunch?
Schools brief
The export
The World Ahead boom is2022
driven mostly by markets. Last year droughts in North America and Europe wiped
out
WhatvastIf?swathes of crops. Other calamities followed. When Russia (the world’s biggest wheat exporter)
invaded
Open Future Ukraine (the fifth biggest), Africa and the Middle East struggled to find replacements for
Ukrainian
The Economist wheat. India, the world’s second biggest producer, initially plugged some of that gap—until it
Explains
was
More hit by a heatwave. To protect its domestic supply, on May 13th the Indian government banned
exports
Newslettersof wheat.
Add in
Podcasts shipping delays arising from covid-19 lockdowns and the growing cost of inputs such as fuel, and
the price of wheat has reached record highs: the cereal is now over 60% dearer than it was at the start of
Films
the year. Those
Subscriber Brazilian farmers who have been able to pivot from other crops, such as corn or soy—it
events
takes
iOS apparound 120 days to grow and harvest wheat—have done well. And thanks to the weakness of the
real, Brazil’s
Android app currency, the country’s wheat has become some of the cheapest on global markets. That has
made it a
Online coursestempting proposition for importers. In the first quarter of 2022 Brazilian wheat sales to Arab
Search for example, rose by 438% compared with the same period a year earlier.
countries,
The rush to grow the golden bushels is also part of a longer-term plan. Fifty years ago Brazil was not
known for soybeans; it is now the world’s biggest exporter. For a decade Embrapa, the government
agricultural research institute behind that shift, has hoped to do something similar for wheat. Part of the
strategy involves moving production north to the tropical savannah of the cerrado. Embrapa says wheat
cultivation can expand in the cerrado without the need for deforestation by rotating wheat with other
crops, and developing tropical strains. Embrapa has also been encouraging farmers to increase crop
yields. The world record for the most bags of wheat per hectare belongs to a Brazilian who uses

file:///C:/Users/Kullanan/Downloads/Why%20is%20Brazilian%20wheat%20booming_%... 26.05.2022
Why is Brazilian wheat booming? | The Economist Sayfa 2 / 2

Embrapa’s techniques, including the sowing of selectively bred wheat strains.

Yet Brazil may struggle to maintain its production increase. In the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil’s biggest
grain producer, a dearth of big mills to process wheat has slowed farmers down. For the next harvest in
September, many southern farmers are sowing corn, which tends to provide more reliable yields at less
volatile prices. Rising borrowing costs also make it expensive to buy the equipment needed to switch to
wheat. And farmers are hamstrung by high fuel prices and a dependence on imported fertiliser, almost
half of which comes from Russia and Belarus, which are under international sanctions.
Even the most optimistic analysts reckon that, at the current rate of growth, it will take ten years for
Brazil to become a self-sufficient net exporter. It may be one of the world’s great breadbaskets, but when
it comes to producing wheat, Brazil is not yet the cream of the crop.
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