What Is A Plantation?

Agriculture in Brazil

Brazil is a country that is endowed with vast agricultural resources. Brazilian agriculture is also well diversified, and hence the country would be largely self-sufficient in food.

Half of Brazil is covered by forests, with the largest rain forest in the world located in the Amazon Basin. And there are two distinct agricultural areas in Brazil.

The first, composed of the southern one-half to two-thirds of the country, has a semi-temperate climate and higher rainfall, better arable soils, higher technology and input use, adequate infrastructure, as well as having more experienced farmers. Producing and exporting of Brazil's grains and oil seeds are mostly done here.

However the other area, located in the drought-ridden northeast region, in the Amazon basin, lacks well-distributed rainfall, good soil, adequate infrastructure, and sufficient development capital. Although mostly occupied by subsistence farmers, the latter regions are increasingly important as exporters of forest products, cocoa, and tropical fruits. Central Brazil contains substantial areas of grassland with only scattered trees. The Brazilian grasslands are less fertile than those of North America and are generally more suited for grazing. Plantations are less often found in this area.

Drought in Brazil

 This leads to the first region to have a better economy, where they can sell all of their crops for money for their people. The second region would have a hard time with this because they would not have as many crops to sell. 

Brazil is the world's largest producer and exporter of sugarcane, coffee, soybeans, orange juice, tobacco, forest products, nuts, other tropical fruits and cocoa.

Exported agricultural and food products, accounts for about 35% of the country's exports.  

Examples of Plantations in Brazil

Examples Of Plantations in Other Countries

Strawberry Plantation At Cameron Highlands, Malaysia.

Munnar Tea Plantation In India.

Pine Plantation in Queensland, Australia.

Australia, Malaysia, India & Indonesia are some countries with tropical climates, suitable for plantation farming.

Oil Plantation In Indonesia.


 





Conditions For Plantation Farming

What is a Soy Bean Plantation?

Soybean is traditionally grown in temperate and subtropical regions worldwide, but now is expanding into tropical regions. The Amazonian region is being directly impacted as new high-yielding tropical soy varieties have been specifically developed for expansion in this region. According to data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, the annual rate of forest loss in the Amazon increased by 40% in the year 2002, resulting mainly from pressure to replace forest with soy agriculture and cattle ranching.


The main products derived from soybeans are:
-Soy meal (the world’s main oil meal for animal feed)
-Soy oil (the world’s most consumed vegetable oil). 


Only a small part of the global harvest is processed as whole bean for human consumption, mostly in Asia. The growing demand for cattle feed in Europe has driven the production of soybean, but recently also by a growing market in China for the production of oil.

What is a Sugarcane Plantation?

Sugarcane refers to any of 6 to 37 species of plants that lives more than 2 years of the genus "Saccharum". Sugarcane cultivation requires a tropical or temperate climate, with a minimum of 60 cm of annual moisture. It is one of the most efficient photosynthesizers in the plant kingdom.

Currently, Brazil has about 22 million acres (34375 square miles) of cane plantations, which makes it both the world's large producer of sugar and cane ethanol, but the country expects to expand it by 15million acres (60 702 846 336 m2) over the next decade to meet rising demand for biofuels.
Examples of products of Sugarcane are:
-cachaça (the national spirit of Brazil)
-Table Sugar
-Ethanol.


Sugarcane-based ethanol is used widely in Brazil, accounting for more than 20 percent of Brazil's transport fuel market.
However, Brazil will be restricting sugarcane plantations for ethanol production from the Amazon, the Pantanal, and other ecologically-sensitive areas under a plan announced on 18 September 2011 by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration, reports the Associated Press. Sugarcane plantations will be limited to 7.5% of Brazil's land.
Some researchers have also argued that sugarcane expansion has displaced ranchers and small farmers to ecologically sensitive regions, including the Amazon, resulting in deforestation and forest degradation. 

What is a Eucalyptus Forestry?

Eucalpytus is a diverse genus of flowering trees of more than 700 species. They are often known as Gum Trees, and for their beneficial economic impact on poor populations. They are grown as plantations to provide raw wood materials & props for gold mining.

However they also suck up from 80 liters a day to 200 hundred liters of water a day, depending on the size of the trees. Not only do you need a lot of water to grow them, these trees also release a chemical into the soil that would kill surrounding plant lives.

Some of the Eucalyptus species also attracted attention from global development researchers and environmentalists. Such species have desirable traits such as being fast-growing sources of wood,oil that can be used for cleaning and functions as a natural insecticide producing , or an ability to be used to drain swamps and thereby reduce the risk of malaria.

What is a Coffee plantation?

 

 The economy of Brazil Coffee Plantation has played a prime role in the politics of Brazil, as it is the pride of Brazil on which a big bulk of the Brazilian population lives. Brazil also earned fame in the world market because of the rich productions of coffee.

The first coffee plantation in Brazil occurred in 1727 when Lt. Col. Francisco de Melo Palheta smuggled seeds from the germ plasm originally taken from Yemen to Batavia, from French Guiana.
*French Guiana = An overseas region of France.
*Yemen = A country that is located in the Middle East.
*Batavia = The name of past Jakarta.

By the 1800s, Brazil's harvests turned coffee from an elite indulgence to a drink for the masses. Like most other countries, Brazil cultivates coffee as a commercial commodity, however relied heavily on slave labor from Africa for the viability of the plantations until the abolition of slavery in 1888.
For many decades in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Brazil was the biggest producer of coffee and a virtual monopolist in the trade. But a policy of maintaining high prices soon opened opportunities to other nations, such as Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam & other countries, which are now second only to Brazil as the major coffee producer in the world.