After 40 years of research, Brazilian scientists and agronomists have managed to develop wheat varieties that can be grown in hot and dry areas, typical of tropical climates. Production has already begun in the cerrado, in states such as Goiás and Minas Gerais, with good results. The expectation is to make Brazil self-sufficient in wheat production, the only agricultural commodity that the country needs to import.
The country has even bigger ambitions. In ten years, if all goes well, Brazil may dispute a place among the world's largest exporters of the cereal, alongside the European Union (responsible for about 17% of global shipments), Russia (16.4%) and Australia (13.7%).
Today, the Midwest, where tropical wheat is being cultivated, is responsible for 10% of the national production of the cereal (the rest comes from the South). The country already has a productivity champion. It is the rural producer Paulo Bonato, from Cristalina, in Goiás, who harvested 9.63 tons of wheat per hectare, three times more than the national average, last year.
"The genetic potential of the seeds that we plant in the cerrado can reach productivity of up to 10 tons per hectare," says Celso Moretti, president of Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), in an exclusive interview with Czapp.
they are growing wheat in the savannah holy shit
Mind immediately went to Brazil's diplomacy to disseminate savannah soy and China's to disseminate their miracle rice across subsaharan Africa. This has so much liberation potential and also makes me slightly less nervous about the inevitable destruction of Brazil by Climate Change.