No end to the scale of beef production in Brazil

After a month of travelling across Brazil from the top of the Amazon region to the bottom of the Pampa biome in Rio Grande do Sul, I have experienced everything the booming Brazilian beef industry has to offer.

It’s a powerhouse of beef production and the country is the world’s largest exporter of beef.

Despite that, they eat beef twice a day and consume a whopping 80% of what they produce. There is no end to the scale of production and domestic demand doesn’t seem to be slowing down either.

Data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics said that Brazil produced 8.91m tonnes of beef in 2023, that is 11.2% more than 2022.

It’s difficult to comprehend or even summarise how Brazil produces beef, but the principles of what it does are the very same as what we do in Ireland. With this booming production come serious environmental concerns as to how sustainable this industry is.

I visited 20 different farms, two meat processing plants and spoke with 58 farm managers, labourers and staff from Embrapa (the Brazilian agriculture research and advisory association).

In northern Brazil lies the Amazon biome. Cattle breeds here are primarily Nelore and Brahman, with some animals being crossed with Angus. These Bos Indicus breeds are suited to the moist tropical Amazon climate. In southern Brazil, production more closely resembles Ireland. Hereford and Angus cattle fill the rolling landscape.

My experience in these regions was incredible. To see the large herds graze grass under the warm humid sun was like something from a Kerrygold butter ad.

I was expecting feedlot beef and highly intensive systems. It was quite the opposite.

Cattle graze on grass year round. Some are placed in a feedlot for 100 days to finish, but most are finished at grass; sometimes with supplements like maize, soya and cotton seed.

Approximately 85% of cattle in Brazil are on pasture and 15% of animals are within a feedlot system.

Managing grass follows the same principles as our lush pastures in Ireland but it has some added complexities.

For example, Brazil has a dry period of no rain for three months where grass turns brown and stops growing and then it quickly hits a wet season, where high levels of rainfall, along with consistent high temperatures, causes rapid grass growth.

Controlling grass growth and managing stocking rates within this dry period is very difficult. In relation to fertiliser, about 150kg of N/ha is spread in Brazil each year.

Some farms spread no fertiliser and are almost running an organic system. If you are wondering the cost, one farmer paid €460/t for urea at the beginning of March. The country imports 90% of its fertiliser, primarily from Russia.

The cattle at grass typically gain 0.8kg/head/day. This will be reduced significantly during the dry period when grass growth is stunted. During the finishing period within a feedlot, they will gain from 1.5kg to 2kg/head/day.

The animals are usually slaughtered at around 550kg to 580kg and are typically around 30 months. However, the average age at slaughter in Brazil is 36 months. This is down from 48 months in 2019.

Farmers in Brazil are trying to produce cattle for the Chinese market. They locally call it “China beef”. Beef looking to be sold in China has to be under 30 months of age.

Unlike in Ireland where we have the Bord Bia Sustainable Beef and Lamb Assurance Scheme, there is no traceability scheme in Brazil. You may wonder how they can determine the age when they have no traceability system within the country. The answer is, they count their teeth on the slaughter line.

If the animal has four or less teeth, they are deemed to be under 30 months and can be sent to China. A controversial method by European standards, no doubt, but it pleases the Chinese and they get their cheap beef.

The current price farmers receive in Brazil for their beef can vary by region but, in Mato Grosso, one of the largest beef-producing states, farmers were getting quotes for heifer beef at €2.53/kg and bull beef was €2.80/kg for animals under 30 months.

Farmers can receive a bonus for slaughtering under 30 months and can get a traceability bonus if they tag their animals 90 days before slaughtering.

When tagging, they record simple information such as animal breed, current farm, previous farm, and an estimate of age. This can result in a 9c bonus on top of the base price.

I visited a JBS feedlot system in Campo Grande. Here, they fatten 30,000 cattle annually. The company rents the feedlot from a farmer and has 44ha of feedlot.

The system works similar to most commercial feedlots in Brazil. A farmer sends their cattle to the feedlot and pays a set price per day for feeding and fattening the animals. The charge is usually between €2.80 and €3.30 per day, depending on the operator.

Within the JBS feedlot, a minimum daily liveweight gain of 1.5kg is guaranteed.

The animals will usually enter the feedlot at 350kg to 380kg and will be on the holding for 90 to 120 days.

JBS never owns the animals. Instead, they offer a service of feeding for farmers who may not have the facilities to do so. I asked what the margin would be like within a feedlot business model for JBS and they said they run on a 1.5% profit margin. I asked a private farmer operating a private feedlot what their profit margin would be and he said between 10% and 15%, a stark difference, and maybe we will take the former with a pinch of salt.

The most memorable part of my time in South America was undoubtedly the Amazon region. It’s one of the natural wonders of the world and also an agricultural artery within Brazil. It’s an area with global focus and all the experts of the world like to share their piece of expertise about what is happening. Well, here is mine.

The visits began in Alta Floresta, which is in the northern territory of the Mato Grosso state. This region lies within the Amazon rainforest area and all the farms I visited here would have been rainforest only 50 odd years ago.

I visited a farm owned by Lorival Sguissardi, a man who purchased land in the rainforest in the early 1970s and cleared 150ha of it in his first year.

He did so with a team of 30 men and nothing only an axe. He was 21 years of age and had a dream of farming beef cattle.

He now farms 3,880ha, taking him eight years to clear the land. He told me “the introduction of a chainsaw in year three was a great benefit”.

I asked how much he paid for the land and he couldn’t remember but said 20 heifers would have bought 80ha at the time. People often cycled from southern Brazil on a bike and sold the bike to buy 5ha of rainforest. At the time, the government was trying to convince farmers to purchase and open land, with the aim of making Brazil an agricultural powerhouse. That, they may have achieved but it comes with a shadow over their environmental credentials.

Today, the atmosphere has changed in the region, opening native woodland has become difficult, farmers need a licence and, since 2008, farmers who purchase any native rainforest must leave 80% of it untouched and can only open 20% of the land.

Last year, 11,000km squared of rainforest was opened and converted into farmland.

Deforestation is well and truly alive but this is primarily legal deforestation. One Embrapa researcher told me that illegal deforestation accounts for roughly less than 5%.

I was fortunate enough to meet many farmers in this region and they are incredibly humble, honest and hardworking people. They realise they farm the lungs of the world. The eyes of the world are watching them and they feel vulnerable to attack.

It’s easy for people to sit back in wealthy, developed parts of the world and blame farmers in Brazil for destroying the environment and the beloved rainforest. What these people may not understand is the farmers ended up here as the government encouraged deforestation.

Better life

People were desperate for a better life and an opportunity. The Amazon provided an opportunity and, at the time, it seemed the right thing to do.

The people I met realise the importance of the ecosystem they are within. They are trying to produce a product as sustainably as possible. These farmers obey 500m buffer zones to large watercourses.

They leave 80% of new land untouched. Many of them have begun reforesting parts of their farm.

Some of them have incorporated kilometres of waterpipes as they fence off creeks, and they do all of this with not a red cent from the government. No subsidy, no grant, no incentive, no support. They are left alone to fend for themselves.

The region has some bright, educated and driven farmers who do their best with what they have. If we abolished government financial aid to farmers in the EU in the morning, I would be afraid to think how our ecosystems would be affected.

Michael Martin is a 2024 Nuffield Ireland scholar who, together with all 2024 scholars from the Nuffield world, joined the Nuffield International Contemporary Scholars’ Conference, hosted this year in Brazil.