Julio Bravo
Appearances
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So when you see guys like that investing in ag, who are us to not invest in ag, right? So you see like the three most rich persons in the world investing in agriculture because their businesses stopped during pandemic. Ag didn't stop, right? Because the food needs to be produced anyways. And three times a day, everyone in the world needs to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
But there is something out there that we can definitely, in the next 100 years of farming, we might be able to sell service for Africa farmers and help them to figure out farming. So I want to go back to your family.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
We're not sharing Portuguese. All right. Yeah, let's try.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Oh, yeah. So, that was funny. After Giselle. Yeah. After dumping Giselle. Yeah. So, I have a colleague at my... She works with me and my company, Yara. And she said, oh, I have this friend. You have to meet her because you guys look alike. So...
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And then, yeah. And then I met her in 2009. We started dating. And four years later, we got married. Do you look alike? We look alike on the manners of creation and, you know, like both religious-oriented, you know, little things. You're not attracted to yourself.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
That would not be nice. Yeah. But no, so I met Polly. Polly is a dentist. She and her brothers have two dental practices in Curitiba. So she's a dentist and they have different specializations. And then we started to hang out and we got married in 2014. We had a kid right after. Juliana is her name. She's nine. She just turned nine last Sunday. And she's here at Ankeny School System.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Let's have AI figure this out. There we go. Yeah. So, yeah. So, I am from a state called Rio Grande do Sul. It's really deep south of Brazil, right on the border with Argentina and Paraguay. And I grew up there. Back in the days, I got a scholarship to come up here. I was a foreign exchange student at the Quad Cities area. And I went to Davenport Central High School.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So it's kind of cool to see a kid that never had a touch with the language. Now she's fluent. Like after four months, she's already fluent in English. It's good to be a kid, right? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And then the little one, the two-year-old, she's going to be two in December 2nd. She's like...
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Back in the days, there was a big move from the south to the north. So everyone start to, you know, Rio Grande do Sul is where 100 years old, the last state is where, no, down one, Rio Grande do Sul. Yeah. So that's where 100 years old start to plant soybeans. And then a lot of land there, 100 years old. This year we celebrate 100 years old for soybean producing in Brazil.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It was a priest from Missouri that brought soybeans and soybeans. on beer bottles to Brazil.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So, yeah. So you see, it's all Americans. It wasn't Harry Stein. It wasn't Harry Stein.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. And then, so they brought that to Brazil a hundred years ago. And the soybean really was like a big social program of Brazil because as land start to be more expensive in the South, people start to go up. So Mato Grosso Sul, Mato Grosso, Goiás, Tocantins, all those states up there, up to Pará state. So everyone kind of went up and started to buy land up there, and that was like savannas.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It's different biomas in Brazil, lots of different biomas in Brazil, and lots of different regulations as well. If you're in the state of Mato Grosso or Pará, if you have a 10,000-acre farm, you can only farm in... 2,000 acres because it's an Amazon bioma and you have to save up 80% of your land. It's like you buying an apartment with 10 floors and you can only use two.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
But that's Brazilian regulation. That's very government. Setting aside land. Land to safe, safe land to protect their environment. So it's like CRP. And that's the only thing that can get you in jail. If you cut a tree in Brazil, you're going to go to jail. Really? Oh, yeah. That the people don't play around. Real big tree huggers. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
That's kind of, you know, always have to be defending ourselves about that, right? That's kind of where it's tricky. And I hope politicals don't see that podcast, but we always defending ourselves about killing the Amazon. We actually, farmers are the only one attached with environment.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
I mean, like they have to save up 80%, sometimes 50, 70% of their lands because they need to take care of the land somehow. And they're taking care of producing, right? So, yeah, we're not destroying Amazon. It's probably something else. But Amazon is so rich and a lot of stuff that people look to Amazon to create new vaccines or medicines or whatever.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
How many hectares or acres? It's really depending on the state where you are. But Mato Grosso, I can give you numbers of Mato Grosso. And those are numbers that I saw on the Soybean Association call-up for Mato Grosso. They have another 10 million hectares. They can put up the converting pasture land.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And through the World Food Prize, they invited kids to the Youth Program Institute to come up here and present paper about ag. And back in the days, I created a paper and came up here to present. present to, you know, a whole bunch of people. And then I stayed here for six months doing an exchange program. Then I went back to Brazil. So I went back to Brazil. I started working for John Deere.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
If you put Mato Grosso and Iowa as a site, you have about the same population, about the same size of area. The only difference is Mato Grosso has double cropping. And there is another 10 million hectares that can be converted from pasture land to... So that would be like 25 million acres. Yeah, 24 million acres. I think it's 2.4, yeah. So that can be converted from pasture land to farm ground.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And then we do have lots of eucalyptus, which get our CI scores pretty high because we don't have natural gas, for example. So we use biomass to burn everything. So it's a really sustainable farming practice. And in Brazil, it's cool because it's a nonstop farming practice. Right? Because we can farm all year long because it's really, we have sun probably 300 days a year, right?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
You can farm everywhere. You don't have winter. We don't have the winter. We do have winter in the south. It gets chilly like today, like 30, 35, 40 in the south of Brazil, but then we do winter crops in the wintertime. So we do wheat, canola, barley, and all those stuff in the south. And once you go up to Mato Grosso, that's kind of hot all year long, so...
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then, and then of course, uh, every state has their own story, but, uh, farming is still like, like when you compare us farming and Brazilian farms, uh, United States is really like replacing, uh, uh, type of like, uh, kind of like replacing amount of land, uh, where in Brazil you're like open up new lands every day. So it's kind of like growing still.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It's like you guys back in the seventies, let's say, you know,
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, those guys that went up there, I can put my father-in-law on that list, back in the 70s and the 80s, I mean, those guys were, like, no infrastructure, nothing. Like, they have to build their own hospitals. Now you go and see those farms, they all have, like, schools inside of their farms. They have hospitals inside of their farms. They've become really big, right? But they were the...
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
I mean, pioneering is hard, but down the road, it will pay off. If they didn't have it, they would build it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
in those areas. Yeah. I think like I was saying before, in 100 years, I think soybeans in Brazil are the biggest social program of Brazil. Cities were created around soybeans. If you go to the cities in the state of Mato Grosso, you're going to see like 26, 30 years old cities that didn't exist. Like that city right there, Nova Mutum, which is right up by Lucas do Rio Verde.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And working for John Deere, like your heads go blue, right? It's just like a lot of things change because it's an international company in a really small town where I was from. Horizontina is called the town. Fun fact about the city is Gisele Bündchen, former...
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Lucas do Rio Verde is where Summit Ag has their corn ethanol plants. So, that place, Sinop, all those cities, there is a city called Feliz Natal, which means... Not to be confused with Feliz Natal. Yeah, Feliz Natal means Merry Christmas. Oh, it does? It does, yeah. Oh, that's funny. So, the story goes because a guy broke up his truck there and then, you know, it was during Christmas.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So, he was the founder of the city, so... It's kind of cool to see all those cities and how much they grow in the past 30, 40 years. I mean, like if you go there and I hope someday I can take you guys down there because I'm really proud Brazilian of showing people what we have the best. But those states were developed because of soybean industry.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Are you going technical on me? Yeah. Well, you knew the trillion's pretty good. No, technical words.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, again, it's like in the Amazon biome is one thing, and then we have the savanna biome, and then we have the pampas biome. So every biome has a different rain accuracy. It's hard to tell. Average Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso and Goiás and Tocantins and Piauí and Maranhão, that is called Mato Piba. So Matopiba, it's the state of Maranhão, right up there.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Mato as in Tocantins, the southern state, Tocantins, right there. And then Matopi, Piauí, right up there, Piauí, and Bahia. And then the next one is Bahia. So Matopiba, those states are new states for ag. They're like been farming for 20, 25 years, but they're growing so rapidly. It's just insane amount of growth. And then state of Bahia is where most of the Americans went.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Like there is a group there, it's called Iowa Group. Really? Yeah. You Google about it. Are they from Iowa? They're from Iowa, yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
No, I didn't. He dumped her.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
We're all older than that, so Corey's funny. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So when I arrived here, I arrived because, you know, I think there is a new wave. I think our generation is going to be the generation of new technologies and stuff. And there's a lot of cool stuff that is being created here, again, because you guys do heavily invest in new technologies and innovation.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
I'm not saying that Brazil doesn't, but everything that we use in Brazil for ag was really created 500 miles from here, around here. So I came up here to try and find that. new technology that I can, you know, ship down to Brazil or help companies to bring their business to Brazil.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Oh, yeah, of course. Way hotter, yeah. So, yeah, she's, so Giselle is Tom Brady's former wife, right? Yeah. So I was... Tom Brady who? Yeah, Tom Brady who, right?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
But also on the tourist side, you know, bringing Americans to Brazil really to get this nonsense competition because there is no competition. I mean, like, okay, we're competing for soybeans, but you only export 30% of your beans. I mean, like we export everything. Like, I want to go back to Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso and Iowa for a comparison.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Your GDP, we have the same population, we have the same amount of land of Mato Grosso and Iowa, and you have four times the size of Mato Grosso GDP. And why is that? Because you figure out, you're adding value to your crops. you're adding value with the corn ethanol, you're adding value with your corn flakes or whatever. Lots of things are created after all the soybean exports or corn exports.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
You can get $25 billion into $150 billion things in here in Iowa, which if you go to Mato Grosso, the GDP of Mato Grosso is $25 billion dollars And Iowa GDP is like $170, $180 billion. So we're the same state, right? We're the same size, we're the same people. So what's the difference?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So I think we're in that part where Brazil in the next 20 to 30 years will bring new technology and add value to their crops. So I wanted to be here to get this wave of new technology down in Brazil and help my country to develop new businesses and stuff. But also bringing U.S. folks from different departments of U.S.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
just to pay attention on what's happening in Brazil and what's going on in the ag. Agriculture in Brazil is really, it's one of our biggest strengths in the country. I mean, we can say that 34%, 35%, maybe close to 50% of the Brazilian GDP comes from ag in Brazil. If you compare that number here, you're like 3%, 4% of the U.S. GDP comes from ag.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So you don't have that much responsibility on the ag side when it comes to GDP-wise. But in Brazil, we do, and we need to get that rolling and bringing more capital to the Brazilian agriculture. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So you see my state right at the south. So state of Rio Grande do Sul. I was born in North Park, close to Misiones province. Yeah. Right up there. And then I moved to Curitiba. You see Curitiba in the state of Paraná? Right up there by the ocean. Curitiba, yeah. So, yeah, that's my city right now. Curitiba. Yeah, that's where I found my company. I got married, got kids there.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, I think a little bit of everything. I mean, capital is once, you know, whenever we access international capital, it's going to be good because, again, it's such a smaller economy in Brazil that we need to... have more capital in the country.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
But also on the technology side, I think there's so many technologies that are fun here that you guys are building up that we can bring down to Brazil and make a different or fast, you know. And again, when you compare a US farmer and a Brazilian farmer, the average age of a farmer in Brazil, it's 44 years old.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. They're very young farmers.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
That's a lot of muscle. Yeah. That's what I keep telling everyone. It's like your average age farm here is like 50-something. Oh, that's like 58 or 60. Yeah. Yeah. If you go down in Brazil, it's 44, 45. If you go up central parts of Brazil, it can get down to 38. Wow. So they're like second generation farmers that are taking over. So they're very early adopters.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And we've been early adopters of all the U.S. technology, right? Everything in Brazil, it's really made it here. And we were early adopters since the beginning. So...
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Again, let's just create a startup and bring it to Brazil. If we create an ag tech or a food tech, let's create it here. We're going to test this year at the next season, and then we're going to have to test it again next year. If you bring that same company to Brazil, you can test three times a year.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Because we have double cropping, and depending on the region, if you have irrigation, you can do a three crop in the same year. So with that... It's a lot of things that can be developed, but in Brazil, you can divide your costs into seasons or maybe three seasons. You use a tractor all year round. Right. You use your combine twice a year. More hours than you. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And that's why John Deere was very successful in Brazil. I mean, like those guys arrived in Brazil in 1999 and now they're... not dominating the market, but they're close to dominate the market because those guys grow so much. And same with Acco, same with Case, New Holland, everyone.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Like second market for all of those guys is Brazil because the amount of tractors that we buy, it's just like one farm, one big farm out of Grosso, they have like, I think they have close to 5,000 engines on their farm.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Like one farm in Mato Grosso, it's called Bon Futuro Farm. You can Google about them. It's just insane, the amount of tractors and combines that they have. And that's one farm. Then you can have other farms like that, like SLC.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Do you know SLC? I told you about SLC. SLC in 2006 made the first IPO in ag in the Brazilian trade market. So they're a public trade company. It's a farming. They farm close to 700,000 hectares, which you can multiply that by 2.2.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, everyone's kind of discovering the ag in Brazil, especially the Brazilian Finance District, which is in São Paulo, Calferia, Lima. Those guys are going after the farmers now because they've become like... After the pandemic, everyone saw that the only sector that didn't stop was ag. So everyone started to pay attention more of ag worldwide.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It's the capital of the state.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And you can see guys like Bill Gates buying farmland, Mark Zuckerberg producing their own meat in Hawaii, and you see Jeff Bezos put up a fund of a billion dollars to raise cattle in the state of Pará in Brazil. So when you see guys like that investing in ag, Who are us to not invest in ag, right?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So you see like the three most rich persons in the world invest in agriculture because their businesses stopped during pandemic. Ag didn't stop, right? Because the food needs to be produced anyways. And three times a day, everyone in the world needs to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Someone will provide that food for that guy, right? 7 billion people. So we take for granted.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
I think it's a high status to your question. I think a farmer in Brazil, they're big farmers. It's nice to be around farmers there because they're very successful. They're very humble people at the end of the day. And they're very easy people. I think I'm blessed to work with the guys at Ag because everyone is so nice. Everyone is, you know, that family-oriented business. Everyone is really cool.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
No, Uruguay is a country. Country, yeah. And then Argentina and Paraguay. Okay. Paraguay is another country on the border, which is a very big ag country as well. Uruguay is a very big ag country as well. And then state of Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Sao Paulo are big. And state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso is up there. So it's really all those states are ag states somehow.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Farmers are farmers everywhere in the world. It's like you here.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, because we're not good at marketing. Let's go and learn from Coke, from Microsoft, from Apple. How they're so good at marketing and we're not. I mean, like John Deere is one of the top five companies in the SP500 that everybody knows their brand. I think the only one company in the world that was able to achieve that is John Deere because it's almost 200-year-old company.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And everyone, even if you're not from Ag, if you're in New York and you're wearing a gender hat, people will know that it's a tractor company, right? So I think they're the only one brand that actually got that part figured out. All the rest of us, we didn't. I mean, we're not good at marketing, selling ourselves. And we always have to be defending, like you said, about the water.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
I mean, like someone throws a, you know, out in the water, out on the radio, and someone will just... Pick that on Twitter and go shoot.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Someone will provide that food for that guy.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. But marketing waves. I mean, like we're from ag. And then we're the only one industry as a farmer that we produce something and somebody else put a price on it. It's Chicago Board of Trade that said how much I would have to sell my beans. I cannot say that I want to sell my beans for $25 a bushel. Chicago Board of Trade will say that to me.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And so it's a commodity market, and it's a roller coaster, right? Every five years, we're going to have a crisis. Every seven years, we're going to have a crisis. Even if Brazil produces much, beans will go down. U.S. produces much, beans will go down. So it's kind of like that since we're young, right? That will never change, and that's never going to stop changing.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So the year is facing a downsize of marketing, right? But they're going to get back on track in two to three years from now. The things will be back.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, everyone always have that doubt on USDA reports, right? I think it's the same here, same there when we read it. And I'm traveling here with groups and we're seeing those really nice fields and USDA comes with a report saying, no, that's not going to be it. And then we're traveling and we're seeing it, right? I don't know. It's just like...
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It's hard to build up that infrastructure where we can work as one. Like I said, Americas are united by farming, but we're not really united. We don't exchange much information. I speak Portuguese, you guys speak English. Argentinians speak Spanish, which are the three most soybean producers in the world. And then you can put Mato Grosso as the fourth largest soybean producer in the world.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
barrier language or culture battle or whatever you know it's like it's hard to blend but it's possible it's just like what do you do here it's one step right what do you do with farm for profit right it's really one step of course all your audience will be ag related people right but someday someone in New York will be listening to you and say well that makes sense what those guys are doing right or someone in Sao Paulo will listen to and then say well there makes sense yeah
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So zoom in there, Tanner.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Go to a supermarket. Go to Hy-Vee, Walmart, or any supermarket. I mean, like, have you ever thought about how much is the process of farm to fork? So it's big, you know, from farm to get to the grocery store. I mean, like, it's a process, right? And out of the soybeans, I think we produce close to 30 subproducts. I don't eat soybean. You eat bacon. Do you drink milk? Do you eat egg?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Curitiba. Yeah. They say Curitiba in English. It's Curitiba in Portuguese. Curitiba. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's a 3 million inhabitant city. It's a big city. Holy smokes.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Everything is from, you have ate soybeans, right?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
To go back to farming somehow. So, yeah, so that's kind of, I think people don't appreciate it because they don't know. And so how do we break ice, right? How do we break that to people to understand the process of farm to fork industry? So that's kind of, I think that's kind of my mission here. It's really, how do I connect better?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
How do I, I want to get all the network that I built up in the past 15 years doing what I do and really making the world of VAG a smaller place. So people can connect and together unite the Americans for us to, you know, fight all those nonsense things that people throw out at us.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
people down there to figure it out or you know bring them up here and host them it's right there's a lot of different stuff that that we can do we have to just think outside the box from just planting that seed and harvesting it yeah your universities are close to 150 years old right you've been learning from a long time from all the process i mean like you have agriculture economists yeah uh it is just uh here you go to iowa state you have ag econ right yeah it's kind of cool to see that we don't have anything close to that uh in our college it was that cool when
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. It's actually half size of New York, I think. One third size of New York. But it's a big city. And it's a very ag state. What is that? It's never heard. It's probably Foucault.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
I was in college. Yeah. But I think you guys figure out the, I mean, like agribusiness is a word that was created here. And you do really good on ag and the business side. We are really good on ag in Brazil. Right. We're still figuring out the business side. Because we don't have ag econ engineers. We don't have ag econ people.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
We have agronomists, but they're more like doctors related somehow on the health side of the business, on the health side of the plant, on the health side of the soil. But not much of, let's say, an agronomist that is a good salesperson, a sales rep for marketing.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Right. Yeah. And then why you guys started Farm for Profit? You guys are both farmers, right? Yeah. And then you guys are like that type of farmers where you go and create a new business, right? And because you have the downtime in winter where you're going to have to figure out whatever is going to be there next season. Right. So on that downtime, you have to think about some sort of a business.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
I know a lot of people here in the States that created different business being a farmer, right? So that's why the business side of ag business, you guys are ahead. We don't have a farmer in Brazil that created a podcast. Because they're busy nine months of the year producing something, and they don't have a downtime. It's a nonstop agriculture. There is a new thing in Brazil called ICLF.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It's integrated livestock, forestry, and cattle. So there are 18 million hackers in Brazil integrating that for you. You can Google about ICLF.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. So they do the line. So they produce, if you Google growing livestock, go to... Silvopastor. Yeah, Silvopastor. Yeah. If you put ICLF, Embrapa. Yeah, Brazil. Yeah. Yeah, so go to images. Oh, go to images? Yeah, go to images. Yeah. You're going to see it. See? So you have a line of foresty, and then in between the lines, you can grow your pasture, put it on the ground.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. You want to see another thing? Just open another. There's a boat company in Brazil called F-O-C-K-A-R. Fokker. Fokker. The name of my boat is Fokker.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, so the combine can pass and it can plant corn and soybeans and rotate that. So you can get foresty, cattle, pasture, and soybean and corn in like one season.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
The shade also got something to do with the CO2 from the cattle. So it's kind of like save up the CO2. Yeah. So I don't know how to go technical, but John Deere started this network in Brazil with Syngenta. It's called ICLF.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And then in five years, you can cut that tree and make money.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. So those are things that are possible in Brazil, right? So Brazil is cool because of that. And that's the technology created by Embrapa, which is our, I think it's the most successful federal department in Brazil. It's Embrapa. It's kind of like your USDA somehow. I don't know if I'm making that comparison.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, but Embrapa is a very technical oriented. They have Embrapa for edible beans, Embrapa for corn, Embrapa for soybean, Embrapa for cotton. So they have people from the federal level researching about the development of those things. And I think it's what Brazilian most proud of farming is Embrapa. It's really, we're very proud of Embrapa.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
I think it's European really started with that, right? European countries. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, it's just insane. We can have a new podcast just talking about technology and tractors and combines, which is, like, I think it's the most fun part of LAG. It's really the John Deere's of the world, how that went up. John Deere went from one factory in Brazil in the past 20 years to, I think... seven or eight factories in Brazil. Really? Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It's just like, it's their penetration of the growth of Brazil. When they started, Brazil was, it wasn't what it is now. When they started going to Brazil, right? Yeah. And they made a bat and they nailed that bat because Brazil became like one of the biggest farming producer in the world. And they're selling. It's the same with CNH, same with ACCO, same with all those companies.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
You know, they're making money in Brazil with all that. But they have their own factories down there. So they generate jobs. They, you know, created a new industry. So they're exporting their products from Brazil to all other countries.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, I think John Deere came with, there's this company that is a public trading company, SLC. They did their IPO in 06. They were the ones that brought John Deere to Brazil back in the 70s, I think, in the 80s. They came up here and they started to interact with John Deere. They were the ones that made the first Brazilian combine called SLC, which is from my hometown. It's where I grew up.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, I was right in downtown Curitiba. My wife has two dental offices there. I founded my company, Agro Bravo, downtown Curitiba. It's still there. And Agro Bravo was found there. And while I traveled all over Brazil in the ag states, you know, invited people to come to the state.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
I saw that. I actually lived through that history. And they were the ones that brought John Deere to Brazil back in the 70s, the 80s, and then John Deere would like buying stocks of their companies. And in 1999, John Deere bought the whole business and they became like the largest farmers in the world. And you said they were red?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
the company yeah the the first combine yeah you can put slc uh you can put slc and you're gonna go to image slc combine like right there yep see it's a red and black and yellow 2200 yeah so they look like a john deere they look like a john deere yeah so they went up here they start you know it looks like a james moose
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
and they partnered up with john deere and then i think in 1996 was slc john deere you can see it up there uh yeah that's an slc in the 70s i think slc 2200 yeah those steel tracks yeah 7000 see that tractor right there uh that tractor was the first uh john deere brought the tractors to brazil in 1996 when they started to build up uh john deere tractors so that'd be the 10 series
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
That is an 85 horsepower tractor. Like a 6210 or 60... Yeah. I can't. And it's an SLC. You can see that it's SLC John Deere. Right.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And then John Deere bought the whole business in 1999, and the SLC family went away. But SLC is still a John Deere dealer in Rio Grande do Sul. Okay. The family is still. Yeah, you can see all the logos.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, 72, yellow, black, and red. And in 82, they're our partners. So SLC with John Deere colors. Wow. It would be interesting to talk to someone at John Deere. And here's all the... Yeah, there is a guy that I want to introduce to you. It's Frederico Logemann. He is the head of innovation of SLC, and he speaks very good English.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. I think no because it's a tropical country so you have to tropicalize your product whenever you go to Brazil. Okay. Because it's a different environment, you know, like poor soils and stuff. They probably are selling to other countries from Brazil but not to the States. I don't think we're exporting something from Brazil to the States.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So that was kind of fast forward to 2013 when I found Agro Bravo and I started to drive from Curitiba to all the ag states of Brazil and inviting John Deere dealers to make groups to come to the states and visit John Deere. So that's kind of how I started back in 2013.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It's cover acres upon acres upon acres. Right. That's something cool about Brazil. You can test any technology twice a year. I mean, you probably have a lot of seed companies that come around and grow. If you Google Corteva's number or Bayer's number, their biggest business is probably alongside the United States.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
There is a company from Argentina, a genetic company from Argentina. It's called GDM, Grupo Del Mario. I think they arrived in the U.S. now. They're selling their seeds. But they're the ones that really took over the seed business in Brazil. They're doing a very good job. They are the greatest, I think, in our country. And they're broader countries. Brazil and Argentina are very close.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, it's just a lot of things that that's why I like to say that Americas are united by farming because technology transfer, knowledge transfer, everything is kind of going back and forth all the time. And I think you guys were very successful in creating really cool business in the past 40 years that really shaped the world of ag. And we as Brazilians, we're so proud of our ag.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
At the same time, we have so much still to learn. And where you go when you want to learn something, you go to the best. So I think, you know, here you guys have this really cool environment for learning. Right. And a really cool environment for testing new products and creating new products. I think the money flows in different ways here. So you have access to capital to test things.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, travel ag business, only oriented by ag. So it's really ag tourism. That's what I did for, you know, until, well, to these days.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
We have to figure out some stuff before we have the same capacity that you have. But it's really cool if we can blend it both countries.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
All the businesses you got. You're a serial entrepreneur. Yeah. It's called Startseagro, the name of the business. So you can find us on Instagram. It's called Startseagro. How do you spell that? Startseagro. Yeah. I think there is only an Instagram about it. Yeah. Yeah. See this Instagram? Yep. Yeah. That's our Instagram. Okay. Great. Corey Hillibow follows them. What?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. So that's our company. And we do missions. We host groups in Brazil. We bring groups from Brazil to here, to China, to Europe. So we have this amazing network throughout the world of ag companies. like bringing people, we talk about artificial intelligence and ag. We talk about, you know, we travel all over introducing farmers to farmers. So it's been a very nice ride for the past 15 years.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So that's when we merged Agro Bravo. Now it starts Agro. So it's really cool. Whenever you guys get a chance, I hope I can take you guys down to Brazil and try to show you, and maybe we can do a farm for profit group together. in Brazil and bring people that are interested to learn more about Brazil. So I think we could partner up on that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Well, this has been our pleasure.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
want to go so if you if you do want to go to brazil and travel let let us know and maybe we can get something put together and yeah and it's us and some of our how many how many usually go what's a good number 15 15 to 20 is like perfect group um like if i would highly recommend you travel with your wife because on the weekend we can go to rio or go to some sort of beach or whatever go to see the countryside and then go to a tourist place like iguaçu falls which is the biggest falls in the world um
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So, you know, like make it a family group, like friends and family. It's kind of cool to see it because it's all about family ag. Yeah. And it's the same in Brazil. So you're going to like to travel with someone related. But yeah, a good group, 15 to 20. Go when it's miserable here.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, especially Brazil is such a young country. When you go up from Paraná up to other states, they're very young countries. They're like 30 years old, 40 years old state countries, right? So you travel to see what's happening in the world. But also companies find that traveling was a good marketing tool to get a relationship status with your client.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
yeah january february march is really cold in here just go to brazil it's it's gonna be 100 fahrenheit and it's gonna be hot and cool and you're gonna like it you're gonna have a good amount of days that you should go i think uh uh if we can i always say that let's leave on a wednesday and come back next friday next week so 10 days and then we can we can spend a weekend
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
and do something fun yeah so uh so that's that's one thing that i think uh we can do it um um it's really trying to find that place to do uh technical and and and and explore the country right really know the country in other um ways like go to the beach uh brazil has the beautiful coast yeah and it's nice uh but at the farming side it's even nicer yeah and it's pretty safe oh yeah Oh, yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
No, it's safe everywhere. I mean, like, I would never recommend you go to Rio, for example, by yourself. Go with me. I'll be taking you to the safe spot. Okay. But, like, I wouldn't. That's the only place in Brazil that I don't go.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, we have a very good wine side of Brazil in the Rio Grande do Sul. We have... over 200 cooperatives in Paraná State. You have the big farmers in Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso and Goiás. So you can see a lot of different Brazils if you spend 10 days there. And it's going to be a hell of a fun for you.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Like you travel with your client for 10 days, you're going to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. I mean, you're going to become closer with the guy, right?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Right, right. It's really a B2B type of business. I never actually had like a B2C where I invite farmers or I always go through a company because they organize, they have relationship with the clients. So my first client was a John Deere dealer out in Mato Grosso. It's called Iguazu Machines. It's like the largest John Deere dealer in Latin America right now. So he was my first client.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And then through him, I got to meet all the John Deere dealer owners in different regions. And then I started working for New Holland, for Case, for Massey, Valtra, you know, all those big companies. Then Bayer came up, and then Syngenta, and then all those companies started to some sort of hiring me to do all this traveling. So... So that was kind of fast forward to 2013.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And then my wife wanted to come up to the States to learn English. So she never had that experience that I had when I was 15 years old, 16. And she wanted to come. So I opened up the map. I said, okay, let's go to the States. But I won't go here and I won't go here. Anywhere in between, I will go. No coast.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, this is real American, right? This is actually United States. If you go to New York, you don't see an American, right? You go to San Francisco, you don't see Americans. You see people from all over the world, but not from United States. And it's insane how expensive those places are, especially for me that it's like six to one exchange rate, right? Like $1,000 for me is 6,000 reais.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It's a lot of money. That's my currency, reais. Yeah. Yeah, so it's 5.8, I think, at these days, close to six for a dollar. So it's really expensive to come to the States. And then you come to Iowa, go to Illinois, go to Nebraska. This is really real America, right? People are nice to you.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Like when I arrived here in Ankeny, my neighbors were offering me help or bringing food to me or like things that, shit, I don't, we don't have that in a big city like Curitiba. People don't say good morning in the elevator to you.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And then here people are so nice, right? Yes. And then I got this relationship with Iowa State. Since 2015, I started to building a program with Dr. Kevin Kimley from the Ag Entrepreneurship Initiative. So he started to create programs for Brazilians where we bring Brazilians here to study about successions, study about new business, study about innovation.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So we created programs and start selling to Brazilian companies and farmers to come up here and spend a week at Iowa State. So we would do classes from seven to noon and then do technical visits in the afternoon and visit what you have the best of the best of Iowa, the creme de la creme of Iowa. Definitely at Iowa State.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, with the guys with all the connections. After I met the guys at Iowa State, I met just everyone that is related to the Iowa State folks. So, met Harry Stein, met the guys at Summit. Summit is doing lots of investment in Brazil. And so, I met a lot of people. really cool people, really cool entrepreneurs from here that really is shaping the world of ag somehow.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
So it's kind of nice to go back and see all of that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. It's just like this traveling thing gets you to places that sometimes you don't know who you're sitting and having lunch with. That's what happened when I came for the first time and I came and I visit those guys. I have heard about those guys, but I didn't know they were there. Right. It's like it's just like really cool people like like you have this ethanol business since early 2000s.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Right. Yeah. Brazil really started to kick off on that in 2014, 13, when an American went down there and created.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Why we as Brazilians couldn't figure this out? Yeah. Because the technology is always created here. You guys are good on that, right? Right. When you go to Brazil and you talk about Americans, for me, Americans, for me, America overall, United States, like Brazilian big brother.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Because, I mean, like, would we have Brazil if it wasn't for the genetics, for the molecules, for the engineering? I mean, everything was created in 500 miles around here. Yeah. Through the World of X. Sometimes we don't realize that. So, to your point, you know, you get to sit and visit with those guys. It's just like what is traveling whenever you're moving. Things happen, I guess. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And we met some really cool people down the road. I think there was that. And of course, Brazilian farmers became so big and so important that when you travel with them, there is always like a John Deere VP hosting them or a Bayer VP hosting them. So you get to meet those guys with the Brazilian farmers groups, right?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
It's like the half the size of Texas, our whole GDP. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
From our stable. I think now is the time that you're returning your investment for all the investment technology you did back in the 60s, 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and then you start to export that, right? And it was the interaction between colleges and private sector here, it's really cool. We don't have anything close to that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And again, I don't want to compare Brazil to United States because there is no comparison. We were colonized by Portugal, Portuguese. So Pedro Alvarez Cabral founded Brazil in 1500. Christopher Columbus arrived here in 1500. 1492, eight years difference. And why are we so different? Colonization. So we can go back and do a whole podcast about that. Ken, I would love to do that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Like you're saying, the size of territory of Brazil, and we're the only one that speaks Portuguese. All the rest speak Spanish. Right? And we have different accents. Like if you go to Rio Grande do Sul, it's like going to Texas. People talk really strong. Yeah. And then you go to Mato Grosso, people talk like a Missouri type of accent. Sure. Right? Does anyone get up into like a Canadian accent?
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah, but to your point, let's talk about Canada. If you zoom out this map and you're going to see Canada, United States, Central America, and South America, those four places in Americas, let's put Americas united by farming. All of those guys together, they probably produce 50% of the world's food. Mm-hmm.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Right, but what about those South Africans guys here? So that's what I thought. That's kind of my thing here. We are very Americanized in a way, so we use a lot of technology in the States. So from the States in Brazil, and we were able to develop this beautiful country with all this U.S. technology and partnerships.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
And of course we have Embrapa, which is a state level, like USDA of Brazil, that they did an insane work back in the 60s when Alison Paulinelli founded Embrapa, and he sent out students from colleges to visit the world and bring back technology to Brazil. So that's kind of how it started back in the 60s and the 70s of Brazil. But in the 70s, Brazil has 70 million people.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
All right. Thanks for having me. It's a lot of fun. It's my first interview in English, I guess.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Now we're 250 million people. But if you see those lines, we learn from U.S. a lot of really cool things that we use in Brazil. But now Brazil can transfer all the knowledge to Africa. That's what I think is going to happen. You know, this move where we use U.S. technology, we learn.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Now it's time for us to grow as a country and transfer technology to Africa and help to develop farming practice in Africa.
Farm4Profit Podcast
F4F - Julio Bravo - A Look Inside Brazilian Agriculture
Yeah. And then we don't know. But there's another story for later. And then Tanner might like that. They need to figure out a lot of stuff in Africa still. You know, like those all those countries, it's really hard to say that they are. easy to do business with. There's a lot of social problems and things that they need to figure out that Brazil already figured it out.