Brazil: A Looming Threat to U.S. Agriculture?

Its farming techniques aren’t exactly hi-tech, but Brazil, already the world’s No.2 agricultural producer, may displace the U.S. as the world’s top agricultural producer within only a decade.

It’s small wonder why: Brazil is a “farmer’s wonderland, where fecund soil can be had for as little as $200 a sun-drenched acre," according to one writer --- land that often is cleared by means of "large chains strung between bulldozers," reports another.

Experts attribute this phenomenal growth to several factors --- for starters, low production costs and favorable World Trade organization rulings.

Whatever the causes, U.S. farmers are taking notice.

"Sitting back home, looking at your 80 acres, you can't imagine what it's like to see tractors planting all the way to the horizon and then just disappearing," says Matthew Kruse, 26, a sixth- generation Iowa farmer who helps run an investor-backed farm in Brazil. "There definitely is a lot of opportunity here that you'll not find in the United States anymore. You should come down and see what you're up against."

Posted by Jim Langcuster at May 26, 2005 04:14 PM | TrackBack