Brazil develops tropical wheat and predicts self-sufficiency in 5 years

There are a few things that would make Brazil a lot more stable economically (and even socially and politically) if we achieved self-sufficiency:<p>Fossil fuels: Currently, Brazil is self-sufficient in oil, but we export petrol to buy back refined fuels (gasoline and diesel). If we were self-sufficient in fossil fuels we would be much more immune to inflation every time OPEC decides to reduce oil output.<p>Wheat: We are the top of the world exporting foods. We produce 6x our current need. Nevertheless, we still need imported wheat. Ukraine war and dollar variations literary affect our bread.<p>Fertilizers: The largest world food producer needs imported fertilizers. The irony: our main supplier is Russia. This basically prevents Brazil taking any side in the conflict and affects our (and our buyers) food prices as much as wheat.<p>Achieving self-sufficiency in these three areas would be like a second independence for us (first was when we got free from Portugal).

This sounds amazing, but at the same time, I am concerned about the rain forest. Obviously more economically useful crops would accelerate repurposing the rain forest. Maybe the world would need to subsidize Brazil more to keep the rain forest? And could Brazil be expecting more subsidy with this development?

They claim the current wheat yield is 3.3 tons&#x2F;hectare while the new variety has yield 10 tons&#x2F;hectare, about a 3x difference.<p>What impact does this have on the micronutrient profile of the harvested crop? And does this result in faster depletion of those micronutrients from the soil, i.e. is it sustainable to harvest this crop?

In the 80&#x27;s, Embrapa (same research agency) discovered a way to grow Soy in the Midwest&#x2F;cerrado... And that&#x27;s how today Brazil is the largest soy exporter in the world. Before the 80&#x27;s, soy was only grown in the South of Brazil (and Brazil imported soy at the time as I recall).<p>Currently, wheat is also only grown in the South as well.<p>Now, things are not simple. The wheat prices will need to be competitive to make farmers plant wheat instead of only soy. Soy currently totally dominates Brazilian farming. Everywhere you look you only see soy.<p>PS: Embrapa is also developing several varieties of grapes for Cerrado&#x2F;Midwest region. Currently it&#x27;s basically only grown in the South as well.

Anyone familiar with the governmental policies of Brazil? They mentioned deforestation twice to say that it&#x27;s not a problem because this will be done on existing farmland. But, how long that will hold when there&#x27;s money to be made?

Embrapa does a truly remarkable job. It has for decades

This is a massive development for the world, not just Brazil. Tropical wheat would fix the constant food insecurity issues in all the tropical countries in the world.

An interesting take on this. Will it lead to a general increase for the Global South?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HKvT7OS-lbU">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HKvT7OS-lbU</a>

This article is a copy and paste of an article dated 6 March 2023:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.czapp.com&#x2F;analyst-insights&#x2F;brazil-develops-tropical-wheat-and-predicts-self-sufficiency-in-5-years&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.czapp.com&#x2F;analyst-insights&#x2F;brazil-develops-tropi...</a>

So we have a free hectare and we want to produce food. We decide to culture wheat in that space.<p>Our wheat would reach around 1m high, thus our &quot;food 3D printer&quot; has a volume of 100 x 100 x 1m. We could obtain 2 to 7 tons of wheat in that space<p>With corn our production space is 100 x 100 x 2 m and we can obtain on average 5 tons of corn (but we could obtain 7-10 tons with some extra effort).<p>With avocados our production volume is 100 x 100 x 25 m. We could obtain between 7 and 13 tons of Has avocados, but with a good culture practices, good rootstocks and smart planning we could produce 23 tons<p>With Oranges we could harvest also 10 - 22 tons of oranges<p>And bananas would yield 50-60 tons of food... on average<p>So If our goal is to feed as many people as possible, what should we culture, trees or herbs?

This is incredible news to read. I am now even more optimistic about the future considering this and the progress in renewables (in market) and fusion (in meaningful achievement) over the last 15 years.

This is great but I think they&#x27;ll burn down the Amazonian forests to turn them into dipe ground for intensive agriculture. We are too dependant on grain. We should probably learn from the Koreans and Japanese, diversify and do more algae farming?

Who wrote this article? How come it has no byline?

As tropical weather slowly moves further north and south from the topics, this seems like good news for humanity in general?

US: We have to bring democracy to Brazil, ASAP.

More agriculture in Brazil means more destruction of Amazon forest.

Self-sufficiency is not a real metric when it comes to commodities. Wheat sells at the market rate to whoever buys it.

Auto-sufficiency in 5 years and back to dependency in 25 years, after global warming decimates their agriculture.