The Expansion of the Main EU Competitors' Supply Chains: Brazil's Case

Agri-Food Sector Overview

Agricultural area in Brazil is extremely large with 275 million hectares, being surpassed barely by Australia, China, and the United States in 2011. Arable land represents only 72 million ha, and about 5.4 million ha are equipped with irrigation facilities (FAO 2011). In the last decades, Brazil made great efforts to shift from a traditional farming system to a farming system based on large-sized farms that apply modern technologies. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics reports the number of farms in Brazil at 5.2 million. The number of small subsistence farms with less than 10 hectares is still quite large, accounting for close to half of the total (49.4%) but only 2.2% of the area farmed. Farms larger than 1,000 hectares represent only 1% of all farms, but 45% of the area farmed. Grains and livestock products are typically produced on large scale farms, whereas staple commodities are produced on small family farms.