Brazilian Agriculture Industry History

  • 1 BCE

    Early Farming

    Brazilians ("Indians") began to farm cassava, peanuts, tobacco, sweet potatoes and maize, in addition to extracting the essence from other local plants such as the pequi and the babassu.
  • Jan 1, 1543

    Sugar cane was introduced to Brazil

    Fermented sugar cane later became the base for cachaca, a light rum that is the national spirit. Cachaca is used to prepare the national drink, the caipirinha.
  • Jan 1, 1550

    African slaves were shipped to Brazil to work sugar plantations.

  • Soybean production began

  • Henry Ford obtained a Connecticut-sized land in the Brazilian jungle and began creating his Fordlandia factory town for the creation of a rubber plantation

  • coffee was introduced to the country

    Coffee hastened immigration following the end of slavery. The era reached its peak with Café com leite politics, ending with the Campos Sales administration.
  • Brazil’s Petrobras was founded under the slogan “o petroleo e nosso" (the oil is ours) as the country produced 2,700 barrels of oil per day and consumed 137,000 per day.

  • Period: to

    brazilian agriculture go into diversification

  • Mechanization

    the State cut subsidies and the market began to finance agriculture, leading to the replacement of manpower with machines.
  • Brazil in 2005 produced around 8.7 million tonnes of beef, becoming world export leader in 2003 after surpassing Australia.

  • Brazil was the third largest exporter of agricultural products in the world, behind only the United States and the European Union