Observations from Mark Sprague, Hull, Ill.
Today, I joined ISA leaders and drove into the country to get our first look at the 2011 Brazilian soybean crop. We visited farms in the state of Mato Grosso near Chapada dos Guimarães and Campo Verde before traveling to Primavera do Leste for the evening. Mato Grosso produces about 30 percent of Brazil's soybeans.
The scope of these farms amazes me, with 12,000 acres and 100 to 145 employees. A farm, just a little smaller than mine with 3,000 acres, had 15 employees. Labor is a lot cheaper down here. At home, we have larger machinery and equipment to get across more acres with less labor, which is something we have to do.
It is amazing to me to see soybean and cotton fields that last for miles and miles. Today, they told us they break fields into 250-acre grids. I don’t even have a field that is 250 acres by itself in Pike County, Illinois.
Overall, it’s great to meet farmers in a different hemisphere and a different side of the equator and see that many of their challenges, opportunities, struggles and successes are very similar to ours are in Illinois.
I really enjoyed the trip yesterday to the Brazilian stock exchange. They don’t have any open outcry and all the trading is electronic.
When I was with ADM, I used to buy shiploads of soybeans from Paranaguá Bay. I’ve never been there, and we get to visit the area in a few days.
To read more obervations from participants, visit the blogs posted by Lon Tenneson, Farm Progress editor, http://www.dakotafarmer.com/blogs.aspx/brazil/day/2/2023, and Tom Steever, Brownfield Network, http://brownfieldagnews.com/author/tsteever/.
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