Brazil's beef industry eyes new markets

CAMPINA VERDE, Brazil -- Want an idea of how important Brazil's beef industry has become? The recent death of Bilara, a champion breeder, merited a two-column obituary in the leading business daily Gazeta Mercantil.

Bilara was no ordinary cow. Over 19 years, she produced 172 calves, all but five from test-tube embryos, making her a pioneer in the technological revolution that is transforming Brazil into a global player in the beef business.

Latin America's largest nation is playing catch-up with meat producers in rich, industrialized nations by adopting and adapting their technologies and farming techniques and is closing the productivity gap with its main competitors, the United States and Australia.

As a result, Brazilian cuts have muscled in on new markets in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, tripling the sector's exports to over 750,000 metric tons in three years and making Brazil the world's No. 3 beef exporter -- although it exports only 10 percent of its annual production.

Today, Brazil boasts the world's biggest commercial herd with 165 million head. Worth $120 billion last year, agribusiness made up 20 percent of Brazil's gross domestic product.

"Thanks to technological advances, we have multiplied the number of grass-fed cattle" per hectare (or 100 acres) by nine, said Edivar de Queiroz, president of Brazil's beef exporters' association, ABIEC. "And we have reduced seasonal drops in production. That's fantastic progress."

Smaller ranchers investing

So far, it has mainly been sprawling ranches such as the ones Queiroz keeps in Sao Paulo, Rondonia and Goias states that have adopted new technology.

But smaller ranchers are also investing. Rancher Marcelo Lima pioneered simple but effective technologies on his 700-hectare Fazenda da Gameleira, near Campina Verde, a small farming town some 330 miles northwest of Sao Paulo.

The new technologies that cost him $119,000 might not seem earthshaking: correcting soil acidity and fertility, pasture rotation, a clean drinking water system, moving cattle around as little as possible between fields and smart, cost-controlling software. But they had an impressive effect.

"Before, I could raise 50 head of cattle per 50 hectares, now I can raise 180 head, and there's room for more once I can afford to buy new cattle," said the 40-year-old businessman, who also runs an advertising agency in Sao Paulo.

With Europe and Asia scourged by fears of mad-cow disease and foot-and-mouth epidemics, Brazilian beef -- lean, hormone-free and raised just on grass, salt and water -- is in demand.

At the same time, artificially inseminated breeders like Bilara are gradually raising the quality of Brazil's herd.

"There has been a revolution in the quality of stock over the past decade thanks to new breeding techniques," said Luis Alfredo Deragon, technical director at Nova India Genetica, the breeding company that made $1.5 million out of Bilara during her working life.

Specializing exports

Many of Brazil's cattle, like Bilara, are hybrids of Indian, European and Brazilian stock that produce better beef in the country's tropical climate.

As Brazilians love their beef -- a favorite national dish is a succulent churrasco barbecue -- only about a tenth is exported. But that is also changing, as exporters learn to specialize in cuts export markets want, such as ground and hamburger meat.

ABIEC predicts beef exports will top 700,000 tons in 2003, worth $1.4 billion.

"What we have to do is produce a more sophisticated product, with more value added," said Queiroz. "At the moment, our beef is shipped as a commodity and so is priced as a commodity. We need to start shipping ready-cut steaks that go straight onto the supermarket shelves."

That's what Queiroz's company, Minerva, Brazil's fourth-largest beef exporter, is doing. It has targeted Sweden and Finland as its first markets and plans to expand to the Middle East.

"By shipping ready-packaged beef, we can improve the markup by between 10 and 20 percent," he said.

A top Brazilian priority is to include agribusiness in a new round of world trade talks agreed to last year in Doha, Qatar. But many in the business doubt the rich, industrialized nations will open their markets or end subsidies that protect their farmers from the cheaper Brazilian competition.