São Paulo – In the early 1990s, soy covered little less than 7,000 hectares in the state of Piauí, in the northeast of Brazil, and the crop resulted in 12,200 tonnes. In the first crop in the years 2000, the area covered by soy had climbed to 40,000 hectares and the volume by 100,000 tonnes. In the last crop, farmers cultivated 383,600 hectares of soy and removed from the earth 1.14 million tonnes. The state, considered one of the new agricultural frontiers for Brazil, has become the main large-scale producer of the commodity and is practically living a soy fest.
“The main factor is commercial. There is immense demand in China and this demand makes the rest run,” stated Ricardo Montalvan, soy improvement researcher at the Mid North Unit of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), regarding the reasons for growth of production in Piauí. Added to that, however, he mentions the adequate climate conditions in the state and the development of technologies that allow for good productivity of the plant. “And we have entrepreneurs,” he said.
The person responsible for Information and Logistics at the National Food Supply Company (Conab) in Piauí, José Pereira do Nascimento Júnior, believes that entrepreneurship was the primordial factor for growth of agricultural production in the state. “People from the South migrated here, have been betting on production and have been pleased with the result,” said Júnior to ANBA, recalling that “southerners” started the plantation in the “chapadões”, as the Brazilian Savannah, the Cerrado, is locally known.
Conab forecasts are for growth of 11% in the crop of the commodity in the state in the current crop, reaching 1.271 million tonnes. And Piauí is standing out in the soy trade balance. Exports of the product totalled 127,000 tonnes from January to July this year, with growth of 44% over the same period last year. Sales resulted in US$ 69 million in revenues to farmers in the state of Piauí.
Both exports and production do not represent much in the country’s total produce in the sector, but they area a significant expansion for the state, which some 20 years ago only subsistence production of the grain. Júnior, from Conab, recalls that the producers of grain are now large business groups. Of all the grain Piauí should produce in the current crop, 93%, according to him, should come from business agriculture. “Before business agriculture, only bean, maze and rice were cultivated, for family use,” he said.
The transformation began in the 1980s, but there was strong expansion at the turn of the 1990s to the 2000s. “At the time, land in Piauí was cheap, which is no longer true,” said Júnior. Technology played an important part in the growth of agriculture in the state of Piauí, with the work of the Embrapa and that of seed companies who developed varieties that are more appropriate to the climate in the region. In the case of soy, production per hectare, which was 1,800 kilograms back in 1993, is currently at around 2,900 kilograms. There was growth of 61%.
Embrapa itself, since the 1980s, has generated 40 cultivars of soy in the state. Of these, 12 to 15 are still currently in use. The others lost ground and were replaced by more profitable operations. The work is through genetic improvement and takes into consideration the most appropriate cycle for the crop in the region, and the volume of water it should receive during its lifetime, around 500 millimetres of rain, in the case of Piauí. Heat and exposure to the sun are favourable to higher productivity due to the benefits this brings to photosynthesis in the plant, according to researcher Montalvan.
Apart from the work with seeds, however, Embrapa also gives advice in other areas to soy farmers, like 40 centimetre churning of the land, direct plantation (for those who do not churn the land) and fertilizing, once on seeding and another at flowering. All of this and other measures, like pest and disease control, when developed by farmers, help the state produce more and better, despite the land there having fewer nutrients than do the states of Southern Brazil.
*Translated by Mark Ament
