São Paulo – An initiative of Rio Grande do Sul is aiming to transform wheat production in Southern Brazil and to make the region produce only wheat for bread production, which is considered a better quality product than the soft variety, for production of pizzas and biscuits. The strategy is being developed by the Wheat unit of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), which is in the city of Passo Fundo, in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, which organized, in August, meetings with local farming sector representatives to discuss and promote the idea.
The mentor of the project, the head of Embrapa Wheat, Sérgio Dotto, believes that unified production may benefit farmers in trade and simplify exports. “It is hard to keep the products apart in warehouses,” said Dotto, regarding the current scenery of production of both varieties of wheat. He believes that bread wheat may be easier to export, mainly to the Middle East and Africa, markets that are currently supplied by European produce. The idea is to produce wheat classified 220 to 300, with high gluten content.
According to Dotto, due to the climate, wheat is the only large-scale culture that is economically viable in the south of Paraná and in Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul from April to September. According to him, the region has three million hectares of farmland for wheat. Taking into consideration productivity of two tonnes per hectare, the potential bread wheat production, according to the agronomist, is six million tonnes a year. With consumption of two million tonnes in the region, there should be four million tonnes for export.
Sale to great consumer centres in Brazil, like São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro or even the North, Northeast and Midwest of the country, is too expensive, said Dotto, due to freight cost and value added state tax, charged on produce traded between states, among others. It is more advantageous, according to the Embrapa Wheat unit head, to transfer the product to ports in southern Brazil and export.
Dotto recalls that, currently, of all the soft wheat produced in the south of Brazil, just 8% is consumed domestically. In the past, wheat, of which there is currently a market surplus, resulting in exports, was used only for mixing into Argentine wheat, which was higher quality. Today, however, Argentina ships ready wheat to Brazil. The head of the Embrapa unit stated that factories that need soft wheat for production of biscuits may place specific production orders. Farmers in the region tend to produce through the system.
According to the engineer, the idea of producing bread wheat throughout the region was well accepted by those participating in Embrapa meetings on the theme, including talks with cooperatives and rural unions. The last took place some ten days ago, with representatives of the Passo Fundo Rural Union. According to Dotto, the idea will now be discussed with the directors of cooperatives.
In the current crop, Southern Brazil (including the whole of Paraná) planted 1.9 million hectares of what, according to the National Food Supply Company (Conab). In all, production in the three states should reach 4.9 million tonnes this year, reduction of 10% over the previous crop, which reached 5.5 million tonnes. Brasil, as a whole, produced 5.8 million tonnes of wheat in the last crop and should produce 5.2 million in the current crop. Last year, Brazil exported 2.3 million tonnes of wheat, mostly from the South.
*Translated by Mark Ament
