[8] The country also has a significant presence as producer and exporter of rice, wheat, eggs, refined sugar, cocoa, beans, nuts, cassava, sisal fiber, and diverse fruits and vegetables.

[10] The southern one-half to two-thirds of Brazil has a semi-temperate climate, higher rainfall, more fertile soil, more advanced technology and input use, adequate infrastructure and more experienced farmers.

The drought-ridden northeast region and Amazon basin lack well-distributed rainfall, good soil, adequate infrastructure and development capital.

They farmed cassava, peanuts, tobacco, sweet potatoes and maize, in addition to extracting the essence from other local plants such as the pequi and the babassu.

The Portuguese "nourished themselves with wood-flour, slaughtered the big game to eat, packed their nets and imitated the rough, free life", in the words of Pedro Calmon.

This resulted in the Taubaté Agreement, where the State began acquiring surplus for destruction and planting seedlings was forbidden—with the goal of maintaining a minimum profitable price.

[19] Czech-Brazilian researcher Johanna Döbereiner helped lead Brazil's Green Revolution, winning her the UNESCO Science Prize for her work on nitrogen-fixing microorganisms.

[19] Agricultural promotion policies included subsidized credits, bank debt write-offs and export subsidies (in some cases, reaching 50% of the product value).

For many countries this led to a period of "developmentalism" politics, designed by Raúl Prebisch in the 1950s at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

However, unlike many other countries in Latin America, when Brazil exited its military dictatorship, it's "pink tide" economic philosophy was more neoliberal in nature, focusing on reprimerization, including its agricultural commodities.

Brazil's rural population fell from 20,700,000 in 1985 to 17,900,000 in 1995, followed by a decrease in import taxes on inputs and other measures that forced Brazilian producers to adapt to global practices.

[24] Brazil has had an extremely attractive market for ethanol production due to their sugarcane genomics program which led to biotechnology startups and agro-biotech companies from across the globe to locate in the country.

[citation needed] Lack of access to capital, exacerbated by financial instability from factors such as exchange rate volatility, prevents most producers from building significant storage.

Calmon noted that, since the Empire, "the disposal of the harvest is difficult" and indicated that "the old projects of iron roads or cartable paths, linking the coast to the central mountains [...] are resisted by skeptical statesmen, quoting Thiers, who, in 1841, believed that railways were not convenient to France".

[46] Despite increased food production since the industrialization, a large proportion of Brazilians, especially the urban and rural poor, have difficulty meeting their nutrition needs.

[47] Small farmer, landless worker and indigenous movements that had consolidated during or after the military dictatorship mobilized nationwide, pressuring the authorities to prioritize food and nutrition security rose in the 1980s, and were able to strongly shape the direction of developmental policy.

The creation of PRONAF has been credited to favorable political circumstances, beginning with Brazil's re-democratization in the 1980s and a receptive Cardoso administration to the mobilizations of a number of agrarian civil groups.

The expansion of the Center-West required new technology because the region is mainly formed by oxisols, which favor mechanization from soil preparation to harvest, partly because they are nutrient-poor.

[63] It's a giant producer of coffee, sugar cane and orange, and also has large productions of soy, beans, peanut, sorghum, carrot, potato, banana, tangerine, lemon, papaya, persimmon, strawberry and cassava.

[129] The region is a major producer of cashew nuts, sugar cane, cocoa, cotton and tropical fruits in general (mainly coconut, papaya, melon, banana, mango, pineapple and guarana).

However, the sector has been suffering strong competition and losing market to Indonesia, the Philippines and India, the world's largest producers, who even export coconut water to Brazil.

It is estimated that at 295 thousand tons per year the installed capacity for processing cashew nuts in the Northeast, however, the Region only managed to produce around a quarter of that quantity.

[142] The region has a large production of cassava and tropical fruits such as açaí, pineapple, coconut, cocoa, banana and guarana, in addition to being a big producer of Brazil nut, black pepper and soy.

[154] The principal agricultural products of Brazil include cattle, coffee, cotton, corn, rice, soy, wheat, sugarcane, tobacco, beans, floriculture, fruit, forestry, vegetables and cassava.

[196] Floriculture began in the 1870s, led by the son of Jean Baptiste Binot [pt], who had come to the country to decorate the Imperial Palace, and whose orchidarium was internationally acknowledged.

), coconut, cupuaçu, fig, guava, grapes, jambo, jocote, kiwi, mangaba, mango, mangosteen, mulberry, muruci, nectarine, papaya, passionfruit, patawa, peach, pear, pequi, persimmon, physalis, pineapple, pine nuts, plum, rambutan, raspberry, sapodilla, sapote, sorva, soursop, starfruit, strawberry, tucuma, walnut, and watermelon.

[226][227] Much of the remaining deforestation within the Amazon has resulted from farmers clearing land (sometimes using the slash-and-burn method) for small-scale subsistence agriculture[228] or mechanized cropland producing soy, palm, and other crops.

[242] According to data from the Department of Labor of the United States, twenty-first century Brazil ranks third in occurrences of illegal working arrangements (tied with India and Bangladesh).

[247] Plowing and herbicides to control undesirable weeds leave the soil exposed and susceptible to erosion – either by loss of topsoil (which is richer in nutrients), or from gullies.

Entities linked to agribusiness, however, counter with the results of studies carried out by the Brazilian Association of Seeds and Saplings (Abrasem) in 2007 and 2008, affirming "social-environmental advantages observed in the other countries which have adopted agricultural biotechnology far longer".