Animal husbandry in Brazil

In Brazil, the lords of Casa da Torre de Garcia d'Avila pioneered the livestock industry, often using indigenous labor as cowboys.

However, a great drought in the Northeast and the discovery of precious minerals in Minas Gerais at the end of the 18th century moved the cattle ranch in Brazil to the Southeast and South, more specifically São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul.

In 2017, the flocks in Brazil were of the following order: 1,425,699,944 birds, with 242,767,457 chicken and 15,473,981 quail; 214,899,796 cattle, 41,099,460 pigs, 17,976,367 sheep, 9,592,079 goats and 1,381,395 buffaloes, in addition to 5,501,872 equine.

The Southeast has the largest herd of milked cows: 30.4% of the total of 17.1 million existing in Brazil.

[4][5] In 2019, Brazil was the 4th largest pork producer in the world, with almost 4 million tons, after China, the European Union and the United States.

Toledo (PR), Rio Verde (GO) and Uberlândia (MG) are the cities with the highest numbers of pigs.

In 2018, the South region, with emphasis on the creation of broilers, was responsible for almost half of the Brazilian total (46.9%).

Santa Maria de Jetibá (ES) was the municipality that had the largest numbers of both poultry and hens.

For the ranking of chickens came Cascavel (PR), Bastos (SP), Rio Verde (GO) and Uberlândia (MG).

The ranking of municipalities for chickens is completed by Bastos (SP), Primavera do Leste (MT), São Bento do Una (PE) and Itanhandu (MG).

In 2017, the main poultry producing states were Paraná (25.3%), São Paulo (14.0%), Rio Grande do Sul (11.0%), Santa Catarina (10.8%).

Among the states, São Paulo led with 21.9%, followed by Paraná (10.1%), Rio Grande do Sul (8.8%), Minas Gerais (8.7%) and Espírito Santo (7.9%).

Among the municipalities, the largest producers are the cities of Santa Maria de Jetibá (ES), Bastos (SP) and Primavera do Leste (MT).

In the municipal ranking, Santa Maria de Jetibá (ES) occupies the first position both in the quantity of animals and in the production of eggs.

Sheep shearing activity remained predominant in the South, which is responsible for 99% of wool production in the country.

Rio Grande do Sul continued to be the state with the largest national participation, representing 94.1% of the total.

Currently, meat production has become the main objective of sheep farming in Rio Grande do Sul, due to the increase in prices paid to the producer that made the activity more attractive and profitable.

The North Region concentrated 66.2% of buffalo farming, while the remainder was distributed between the Southeast (12.7%), Northeast (9.5%), South (7.4%) and Central-West (4,4%).

However, it is small-scale, without even precise data about the quantity produced: the last official survey cited 160 tons per year, but some say that this number is three times higher.

In 2015 the country exported US$7,637 million of this meat, mainly to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Japan.

At the time, the largest company in the region specializing in this meat slaughtered about 10,000 ducks a day.