Agriculture and Industry in Brazil

Since the early days of Portuguese settlement, Brazilian agricultural activity has been directed into two distinct channels of production, one providing goods for export, the other commodities for domestic consumption. These two branches of activity are controlled by quite different factors and, therefore, are apt to show widely diversified and independent trends. Nevertheless, there are certain general statements which, by and large, hold true for both categories. Thus, for example, the following features may be indicated as characteristic of Brazilian agriculture: (i) misuse of soil resources, resulting in widespread erosion and loss of fertility; (2) transient and intermittent use of farm land, involving long fallow periods or complete discontinuance of cultivation; (3) low output of land and labour; and (4) the superseding of several areas of traditional crop specialization, with the emer? gence of new?and more southerly?centres of production. The farmed areas of Brazil illustrate the statement made by an eminent geo? grapher to the effect that it is not the lands of old civilizations, but those of recent settlement which are the most worn-out parts of the world.1 Land is cleared, cropped, exhausted and abandoned, while new forests are destroyed and their soil plundered. Even now, little over 2 per cent. of the country's surface is planted to crops,2 a fact which favours the reassuring but false idea that the nation is still in possession of vast reserves of highly productive virgin soils. This supposition seems to be based on a double misapprehension: that all forest soils are necessarily fertile; and that a large part of the interior of Brazil is forest-covered. Evidence such as the disastrous decline in productivity observed in some upland soils of the Amazon valley, after the cutting and burning of the primeval forest, has somewhat shaken the belief that forest soils are necessarily fertile. And as the backlands of Brazil become better known, even the man in the street comes to recognize the extent of grassy plains, savannahs and scrub in the make-up of Brazil's plant cover. It is growing increasingly evident that the resource base has been grossly overestimated in so far as the potentialities of soils are concerned. Only relatively small areas where basic lavas crop out, or recent alluvium has been deposited, measure up to the popular conception of the potential fertility of what, not infrequently, has been considered the future bread-basket of the world. As the pioneers slash and burn their way through lands of high native fertility, the belt of agricultural production is pushed further and further from the markets. Many improvements are abandoned and the depleted lands are usually given over to extensive grazing, while the settlement of new areas obviously exacts new investments in the form, for instance, of public utilities. All this tends to increase cost of production. Furthermore, agricultural commodities must be hauled for longer distances and are burdened with ever-increasing costs of transport. As the railroads thrust forward with the advancing pioneer fringe, production declines in the depopulated and impoverished areas to the rear; freight, upon which the roads depend for their livelihood, falls off here, with the result that large sections of the roads are run at a loss?a fact which merits serious consideration, in view of the unsound financial situation of almost all Brazilian railroads. According to data at hand for 1951, of the 41 administratively distinct roads, all but four showed a