Within western Brazil’s massive landscape, a cropping revolution is taking the country’s food growing ability to another level of productivity, helping lower farm carbon emissions and improving farmers’ profits.
Farmer, agronomist and consultant Paulo Ascunção’s 2000 hectare cropping operation highlights some of the major advances the country is making in its agricultural cropping practices.
His 2000ha farm is relatively small in a state four times the size of New Zealand, where his neighbours farm 600,000ha.
But Ascunção also has an expanding farm consulting business that extends in an 1000km radius from his own property in a state where it is often preferred to take a light plane rather than drive to visit clients.
Collectively, his clients have enough buying power to order fertiliser by the shipload, direct from its manufacturer.
Taking his skills as a farmer and as an agronomist, he is specialising in helping his clients – whose land holdings total 420,000ha – to incorporate corn into their cropping calendar as a second crop, or safrinha.
The practice of planting a second crop as corn after soybeans have been harvested in the late end of the wet season in February is a relatively new one.
However, it is already starting to lift Brazil’s corn production into double digit annual growth rates, driven largely by Mato Grosso growers.
Brazil’s corn harvest in 2023 was 112 million tonnes, almost a 50% lift since 2018, and the country has a projected harvest by 2032 of 177 million tonnes, largely off the back of more farmers adopting the safrinha approach.
Brazilian agri experts can see a further 20 million hectares plus of land that is still underutilised either in cropping or rough pasture that could still be bought on stream to supply the burgeoning demand for corn, underpinned by massive expansion in corn ethanol refineries throughout the region.
Ascunção’s links to corn-sourced bio-ethanol highlight the role the bio-fuel has played in encouraging this major shift in crop change. He is himself one of 24 shareholders in a farmer-owned ethanol refining business, ALD Bioenergy, the first farmer co-op refining model established in the country.
It collects corn from 65,000ha of farmer shareholders’ crops, feeding the co-op’s refinery that processes 1000 tonnes a day of corn. From this comes 113 million litres of ethanol a year and 70,000t of dried distillers grain (DDG) for cattle feed. It is tagged to be expanded by 2026 to process 3000t a day.
The cerrado (grassland savannah) biome with its wet-dry tropical climate may outwardly appear a difficult environment to grow a moisture sensitive crop like corn.
“But once the soybeans are harvested, we have found the dry period is ideal for corn.
“Soil moisture is high at planting, while we then get a long period of dry weather with much lower risk of infections and pests. And more temperate corn growing regions like USA and Canada, they can only grow one crop of any type in a year,” Ascunção said.
Despite the turmoil climate change has wreaked in many crop growing areas, Ascunção has enjoyed 30 years of relative reliability with the wet-dry climate pattern.
“Last year would have been the first time we had less rain than usual, hitting our soya bean crop with a 10kg/ha drop in yield.”
He averages 75 bags a hectare, well above the Brazilian average of 66.
“And you really need at least 66 to break even at 100 reals ($30) a bag.”
Sustainability underpins efforts to also lift per-hectare productivity.
Farmers in the cerrado biome are required to hold at least 50% of their farm in nature reserve, and satellite monitoring will detect any de-vegetation undertaken. Detection will mean a loss of the farm’s right to farm, registered with the national Rural Environmental Registry (CAR).
“To cut down any native tree is virtually impossible,” he said.
The sheer scale of the Mato Grosso state means farmers and consultants often choose to fly rather than drive.
The farm’s grain driers are fuelled by short rotation eucalyptus aged six years. Meantime, there is a focus on lifting soil organic matter by incorporating corn into the cropping routine.
Brachiaria grass, a “climate smart” forage grass, is planted with the corn. Thanks to the corn’s Roundup Ready status, it can be sprayed, killing off the grass, which dies in situ, adding to organic matter. Adding the grass in with the corn lifts carbon sequestration to about four tonnes of carbon per hectare.
A payment scheme for sequestered carbon is being proposed.
Ascunção has taken the advice he gives to his farmer clients a step further, planting a third crop every year now, as irrigated beans including black beans, with pumping energy provided by solar power.
He said he is optimistic about the potential for a Mato Grosso safrinha corn crop, bringing not only improved production to farmers, but also jobs to very remote communities, thanks to the ethanol refineries processing the corn.
Rennie visited Brazil as part of an international delegation of agricultural journalists hosted by the Brazilian Association of Corn Ethanol Producers.
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