Brazil has become the world’s leading exporter of cotton, confirming its status as a key player in the global trade of agricultural commodities.
In the 2023/2024 cycle, Brazil sold 12.4 million bales of cotton to the international systemwhile the United States sold 11.8 million units in the same period; and Australia became the third seller in the system, after selling 5.8 million bales.
The Brazilian harvest was obtained with a planted area of 1.87 million hectares in the period 2023/2024, which implies an increase of 13% compared to the previous period.
Cotton production in Brazil is a phenomenon of the last two decades: it is the period in which the agribusiness system emerged on a large scale, which is the productive engine that has irreversibly transformed the Brazilian economy and which is highly technology and capital intensive.
The Brazil’s economy is the first in Latin Americawith a GDP amounting to US$ 1.6 trillion – the ninth in the world – and for this reason it is the world’s leading exporter of soybeans, meat, orange juice, sugar, coffee and now also cotton.
Brazilian agriculture has lower cotton production costs, as well as better yieldsof the global system, above the USA
Cotton yields in Brazil reached 2 million tonnes per hectare in 2023, especially in the large agricultural state of Mato Grosso.
The dominance of Brazilian agriculture is based on its low production costs and exceptional yields; hence Its appearance on the world market causes a drop in prices systematic and long-term.
Cotton in the State of Bahia, Brazil. Photo: EFE/Sebastião Moreira.
This is clearly revealed by the futures markets: ICE US COTTON fell to less than US$ 069 per pound (0.000454 tonne) in July 2024, half of the peak reached in May 2022.
There is a fundamental change in global demand for cottondriven by the change in clothing habits throughout the world, which tends to reject the use of polyester and other chemical products, and instead places natural resources, especially cotton.
This trend also covers the fashion of the world’s major fashion centres (Paris, New York, etc.).
Once again, the truth of what Oscar Wilde established when he said that “snobbery is a friend of art” is confirmed.
Brazil has the largest reserves of agricultural land in the worldwith more than 100 million hectares in the Brazilian Cerrado. Therefore, sustained growth in cotton production is expected over the next 10 to 15 years.
The trend in EU It unfolds in the opposite direction because Their production costs are increasingprimarily due to rising fertilizer prices.
This makes the Farmers are increasingly losing competitivenesswhich constitutes a real paradox in agriculture with the highest level of productivity increase from the history of capitalism
Argentina can once again be one of the main protagonists of the cotton business as it was in the two decades from the 20’s to the 40’s with epicenter in Chaco, although also in Formosa and Salta.
They were years of prosperity in the Chaco countryside that attracted a large foreign immigration, starting with the “German Russian” settlers, as well as the Mennonites, extraordinary and highly efficient producers, coming from different parts of Europe.
Every year, the workforce from eastern Salta, the harvesters of the Chaco Salteño, flocked to the recently founded towns in the then national territory of Chaco.
This productive miracle can return, although the new technological and competitive conditions established by Brazilian agribusiness certainly set the framework for what is possible and impossible in agricultural production at the time.
Meanwhile, the ecological conditions of the Chaco for cotton production, as well as the capacity and pioneering drive of the gringos of the region, with epicenter in Charata and Sáenz Peña, remain intact.
Some essential things are not lost, and they make up the national DNA
