GREEN REVOLUTION
The Green Revolution is a set of research, development, and technology developments that happened between the 1930's and 1960's. This increased production in agriculture around the world. Norman Borlaug has become known as "the father of the Green Revolution". He is credited with saving a billion or more people from starvation. This stems from the development of high-yielding grains, expansion of the irrigation infrastructure, modern management strategies, hybridized seeds, and synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to farmers.
Brazil's cerrado region was not fit for farming before the 1960's. The soil was very acidic and poor in nutrients. In the 1960's, large amounts of limestone was poured into the soil to reduce the acidity. By the late 1990's, between 14 and 16 million tons of lime were being used in Brazil each year. By 2004, it was 25 million tons. This has resulted in Brazil being the world's largest exporter of soybeans. The rise in animal feed production has helped Brazil become the world's biggest producer of beef and poultry.
Brazil has experienced a rapid export growth. This has been helped by the composition of agricultural exports away from tropical products to processed products. In fact, processed products now make up for 3/5 of agricultural exports.
Brazil's major agricultural trading partners are the United States, The EU, Russia, Canada, Japan, Chile, Argentina, the MIddle East, and China.
Brazil is also the world's 2nd largest producer of ethanol. The country's enthanol industry was started in 1975. This was designed to replace crude oil with domestically produced ethanol. By 2010, about 55% of sugar cane crushed in Brazil was distilled into enthanol.
The Green Revolution also brought mechanization into Brazil. In the 1960's, mechanization of soybean operations was occuring very rapidly. Mechanized operations also started to occur as the Brazilian government began to promote wheat production. In 1971-1972, 52.6% of farms used machinery for land preparation. Rice, coffee, and soybeans had the most mechanical land preperation. Mechanical power was used for over 2/3 of the cultural operations, primarily cultivating and spraying.
ref: en.m.wikipedia.org
ers.usda.gov
ftp.sp.gov.br