Dubai – A group of dozen Brazilian bean and other legume growers spent the last few days visiting exhibitors from several countries at Gulfood, the food and beverages industry’s main trade expo in the Middle East, which runs until Thursday (22) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Led by the Brazilian Institute of Beans and Pulses (Ibrafe), they were trying to have a better grasp of the global market and which categories have a higher demand outside Brazil.
Although it’s one of the world’s largest beans producer, Brazil doesn’t export much of its output, which is highly concentrated in the domestic market. According to Ibrafe’s president, Marcelo Lüders, 65% of Brazilian planted areas are for carioca beans (similar to pinto beans), the most popular with local consumers. “There are, at least, ten different types of beans and we want to show to growers that there’s a market both in Brazil and abroad,” he said.
For 10 years, Ibrafe, alongside the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), the Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MAPA), have been running the project Ibrafe Premier, which has as its main goal to expand production of another types of beans. The most exported is the brown-eyed beans (feijão-de-corda or caupi), with a large market in India, the destination of half of the output, and Egypt, which buys around 10% of the total of Brazilian bean exports.
At the stand where Ibrafe’s president was at Gulfood, there were many types of beans in exhibition. “Here, to the Arab market, the main product is the black-eyed-beans [known in Brazil as feijão fradinho], which, for the first time, will have a surplus production for exports. There are also many opportunities to export white beans to Algeria,” he said.
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According to him, the visit of beans growers to Gulfood was positive, since they we were able to see it up close and talk to growers from many markets. This can, according to Lüders, help to diversify the Brazilian production and expand exports – last year, the country exported 112,000 tons of beans. The expectation for 2018 is to increase this volume in, at least, 10%.
“Gulfood is becoming the most important expo to us because it’s close to markets that buy our beans, such as Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Middle East itself. Besides India and Egypt, Pakistan is an important client,” he explained.
Lüders pointed out that the project for the diversification of the Brazilian production is in line with the strategy of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) of encouraging the worldwide production of legume, such as lentils, peas, beans and chickpea. The latter is another legume that Ibrafe plans to increase production in Brazil.
“There are two advantages: chickpea is immune to golden mosaic, a virus that affects beans in some regions; and, expanding production, the price in Brazil, which is currently very expensive, would go down, and we would be able to export to other regions, such as the Arab world, a large consumer of chickpea,” said Lüders.
Ibrafe’s president dreams big: he also wants to increase exports of popcorn. “It a cause that has been set aside but that we have embraced. Arabs love popcorn and there’s a great potential to export this culture, so great we can’t even measure,” he explained, adding that the product doesn’t even have an exclusive NCM (Mercosur Common Nomenclature) at the Secretariat of Foreign Trade (SECEX). “We have to take advantage of the Brazilian fertile soil,” he concluded.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
