RONDONOPOLIS, Brazil – A couple of years ago, Chris Ward decided to jump into cotton production, a crop he had never grown.
He flew around Brazil with his brother-in-law looking at second-hand cotton gins, found one, bought it and seeded a crop.
“I never knew anything about it,” said Ward, who grew almost 5,000 acres of cotton this year.
“I’ve been a risk taker all my life, not a risk averter.”
For Ward, taking risks in Brazilian agriculture has paid off. He operates a four-unit farming business that covers 34,000 acres. About 6,000 acres are in crop production.
Read Also
Canada-U.S. trade relationship called complex
Trade issues existed long before U.S. president Donald Trump and his on-again, off-again tariffs came along, said panelists at a policy summit last month.
Ward has lived in Brazil for 20 years but still speaks with a New Zealand accent.
Like many farmers in Brazil’s interior, he migrated to the area, looking for opportunity to build a farm where land was cheap and plentiful.
Most of the big commercial farmers in Brazil’s interior moved north from the country’s traditional agricultural heartland in the southern and coastal regions.
But some foreign farmers, including Midwest Americans and New Zealanders like Ward, have also moved into Brazil’s giant interior states, lured by the abundant fertile land – a rare resource in their own crowded countries.
But taking up farming in Brazil’s interior isn’t easy.
Banks won’t lend money for land purchases, so buyers and sellers must make pur-chase agreements be-tween themselves, most of them with short payment periods.
The cheapest land is also furthest from railways and ports, so many farmers in the interior must ship their soybeans 1,500 kilometres, often using their own trucks.
It’s a type of farming that works well for farmers with a lot of money to invest.
Ward bought his first farm in 1984 for $600,000 US, by convincing his industrialist brothers-in-law to put up the money.
Others paid for frontier farms by selling established family farms in the south.
Still others, mostly young men in their 20s, have been given money by wealthy farming families who had surplus capital and want to expand by gradually moving north.
There are small, poorly capitalized farmers as well, but they are having a tough time surviving. Ward estimates a farmer in his home state of Mato Grosso must farm at least 5,000 acres to be economically viable.
Farm expansion is also greatly encouraged by a tax structure that gives farmers generous breaks in return for capital investment.
Ward, who also owns a major grain storage facility and has 65 permanent employees, is bubbling with ideas for other farm investments.
But he also looks forward to the day, perhaps 10 years from now, when he will retire to enjoy the fruits of his life in frontier farming.
“There’s no point being rich and being dead,” said Ward.
