The development of Brazilian agriculture: future technological challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Ensuring food security for the worlds population over the coming decades will face the challenges of a larger world population, greater urbanization, limited natural resources, higher levels of income, and stronger links between the agricultural and biofuel markets. Overcoming the challenges these represent will require, among other efforts, promoting sustainable expansion of agricultural production through higher productivity and greater cropping intensity. In this paper, we examine the role of Brazils agriculture industry in the domestic and world markets; first, we review the countrys agricultural development experience, and second, we address some key issues that will play a pivotal role in Brazilian agriculture in the future. The paper highlights the main aspects of the modernization process experienced by Brazils national agriculture industry, presents the style of agricultural growth followed by the country, and discusses selected technologies that have played a major role in transforming the sector over the past four decades. We also analyze income from different farm sizes, and provide an overview of key agricultural research challenges and technologies that will be pursued by Brazil in the near future.