Julio shares the story behind Agro Bravo Travel, explaining how the idea was born out of a passion for bringing farmers together and fostering collaboration through international travel. He walks us through the transformative power of stepping out of familiar fields and into new environments, offering firsthand insights into how global exposure can inspire farmers to adopt fresh ideas, rethink traditional methods, and build lasting relationships.Throughout the episode, Julio highlights some of the most fascinating destinations his travelers have explored—from high-tech European farms and organic operations in South America to culturally rich agricultural hubs in Asia and Africa. He also shares success stories of farmers who’ve returned home with new perspectives, valuable innovations, and strategies to improve their own operations.Whether you’re interested in exploring sustainable farming techniques, learning about exotic crops, or just experiencing agriculture from a fresh angle, Agro Bravo Travel offers something for everyone. Julio even provides tips on what to expect during one of these trips and how to get involved.Join us for an inspiring and eye-opening conversation about the intersection of farming, travel, and cultural exchange. Get ready to dream big, pack your bags, and discover how connecting with the global farming community can help you grow—not just crops, but your mindset and network too! Don’t forget to like the podcast on all platforms and leave a review where ever you listen! Website: www.Farm4Profit.comShareable episode link: https://intro-to-farm4profit.simplecast.comEmail address: [email protected]/Text: 515.207.9640Subscribe to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSR8c1BrCjNDDI_Acku5XqwFollow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@farm4profitConnect with us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Farm4ProfitLLC/
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.
Someone will provide that food for that guy.
there is a podcast in iowa funk for profit was named by they they stirred up a banker near then quick came an auctioneer making profit was their first goal oh boy oh boy oh boy soon may the farmers come to bring us guests and beer and fun one day when the recording's done we'll take our
So, listeners, welcome to the show. This is a Farm for Fun show that was not planned at all. Tanner and I went to coffee with an amazing person this morning. His name is Julio, not Julio. Bravo. And you are from Brazil. And I'm going to let you introduce yourself and what part of Brazil you're from. And just go through your whole story of how you came to the United States.
You're going back for something and you're coming back. And everything that you do, just give us the 30,000-foot view.
All right. Thanks for having me. It's a lot of fun. It's my first interview in English, I guess.
Really? Yeah, well. We can do this in Spanish.
We're not sharing Portuguese. All right. Yeah, let's try.
Tanner and I won't be very present.
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.
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.
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...
Yeah, you dated her, right?
No, I didn't. He dumped her.
He dumped her, yeah, for his wife. Yeah, so your wife is much hotter, right?
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?
Yeah.
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.
It's the capital of the state.
So, like, when you say states and we're looking at, you got Uruguay.
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.
So zoom in there, Tanner.
Let's get a lay of the land by his hometown. How did you say that? Curitiba.
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.
That looks bigger than New York.
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.
Foucault? Yeah. I don't see it. Where's that? Right by your mouth. Yeah.
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.
Fokker. That's awesome.
The brand.
That is funny.
Yeah.
So, let's see. Where would you have been from? Were you in town?
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.
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.
So that's what your company was based on, was travel?
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.
And that's based because generally people in ag want to see how ag is in other parts of the world.
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.
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?
So most of your clients was probably more the corporations, the John Deere's, the seed companies, or even like the soybean growers or the corn growers, right? Because every time I've been offered a trip or seen someone go on a trip like that, it was never the individual that was paying. It was, well, I'm going with the soybean associations.
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.
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.
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.
You want to go to the Midwest. Yeah.
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.
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.
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.
Right, right, yeah.
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.
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.
Yeah, at Iowa State.
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.
So it's kind of nice to go back and see all of that.
I mean, you came here and you have access to Harry Stein and the Summit Group and all that. Like that's... A lot of people from here don't even have access to those type of people. That's pretty cool.
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.
Right. Yeah. Brazil really started to kick off on that in 2014, 13, when an American went down there and created.
Yeah.
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.
Yeah.
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.
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?
Right. What are you doing over there, Tanner? I just am contemplating life. I mean, it's such a fascinating story, the conversation that we had to begin with and where we're going right now because it's a polarizing topic because there's a lot of uneducation that is going on with, you know, is Brazil competition? I just pulled up Brazil.
I didn't realize when you look at South America, Brazil is over half of the square footage, just to use a terminology. Right. It's just made up of a bunch of, like you said, states. Right. So that's a vast area, a vast territory. Right. But like you were saying, the GDP. $2.2 trillion GDP. Compared to the United States.
$34 trillion GDP.
Right, just a drop in the bucket.
It's like the half the size of Texas, our whole GDP. Yeah.
50%.
It is a major impact to agriculture in the U.S. It is a major impact to the ag industry as far as corporate goes. Right. It's a huge market, like you said, for Harry Stein and John Deere. I know we're saying the largest of companies. Right. But we've done interviews with folks that have had Brazilian farms or managed farms in South America. It is providing supply to the market, but...
you, Brazilians, look at us as dad, as grandpa, or whatever. You're learning from us.
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.
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.
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?
Yeah. You can get up into the North once.
They just finish everything with A? Yeah.
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.
I mean, like, it's really America has this thing of... You look straight across over to Africa, nothing grows in the northern region of Africa because it's all desert.
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.
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.
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.
Now it's time for us to grow as a country and transfer technology to Africa and help to develop farming practice in Africa.
You're on the same parallels. Same. So you understand how it works in your environment, your growing conditions. Right.
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.
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.
How did you meet your wife?
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...
That's why you had to meet her.
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.
No, no, no, no.
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.
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...
like saying little words like hi and yeah bye and you know like it's really cool to see that happen yeah you know like being bilingual by the age of eight yeah it's kind of cool that sounds like the similar path that corey and i took i was married in 2011 you were married in 2013. yeah i've got a 10 and an eight year old and he's got an eight and a four four year old eight and four
Yeah, it's just fascinating as you look through that process. But you were telling us during coffee this morning that your wife's family is in agriculture too, or at least invested in 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.
It was a priest from Missouri that brought soybeans and soybeans. on beer bottles to Brazil.
Really?
So, yeah. So you see, it's all Americans. It wasn't Harry Stein. It wasn't Harry Stein.
He ain't no priest.
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.
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.
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.
So it's not true in the news that Brazilians are killing the Amazon.
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.
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.
The ground that is being expanded into, because you did say you have a lot of potential ground there. It's not in production right now.
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.
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.
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?
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...
So the farmland you're expanding on is mainly rangeland. that is like pasture, right?
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.
It's like you guys back in the seventies, let's say, you know,
I always thought about the whole Amazon. They're slashing the Amazon for more farmland. And it's like, I don't know if I would want to do that. Have you seen the documentaries with the snakes? How big the snakes? Everything in there wants to kill you. Right. They can eat a human. There's frogs. You touch the wrong frog. Mm-hmm. It'll kill you. Like, I don't want that stuff coming out in my field.
You stay in the Amazon and I'll stay out here.
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...
I mean, pioneering is hard, but down the road, it will pay off. If they didn't have it, they would build it.
Right. Right. And we were talking about that earlier, too. I'm going to say misconception, or at least what Corey and I grew up with hearing is, as Brazilian agriculture took off, it was always caveated with, well, they can never get it to port. The transportation systems are terrible. Right. But the way you described it reminded me of our trip with U.S. Sugar last year, basically a year ago.
We got down and U.S. Sugar makes the entire economy in that portion of Florida to where they do have their own schools for employees. They do have their own resources for employees that help grow the sugar cane. It sounds like it's the same. Agriculture creates the communities. Yeah.
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.
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.
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.
So what's the average rainfall? In that area. I think of Amazon.
Are you going technical on me? Yeah. Well, you knew the trillion's pretty good. No, technical words.
You've been in Iowa. Right. Do we get as much rain as you got back home, or do we not get as much?
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.
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.
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.
But that's interesting how many companies have been, like I said, interested in South American farming, let alone Brazilian farming. Right. And then, like you're saying, there's agriculture in Brazil that is only 20 to 30 years old. Corey's older than that.
We're all older than that, so Corey's funny. Yeah.
I just, yeah, my mind is blown. In our conversation, the way it started off today, I didn't know how it was going to start. You know, Corey didn't give me a lot of perspective.
Because he didn't have one. Right, right. Well, I mean, I knew we needed to talk.
Right, right. So what have you been doing in the U.S. in the most recent time here?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, so what does Brazil need? Is it capital? Do you see something here in the Midwest that they need?
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.
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.
Really?
Yeah. They're very young farmers.
Yeah. There's only been agriculture in some of those areas for 20 years. You've got to slash all that rainforest.
That's a lot of labor.
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.
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...
The reason I think that it's so much older here is it takes so much more capital or a lot of capital. I'm not going to say more because I can't compare, but are they making good money as farmers in Brazil?
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.
Yeah.
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.
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.
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.
Holy smokes.
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.
We're worried about corporate farming in the U.S., We don't have corporate farms that have 5,000 engines.
Yeah.
At least not that I am aware of.
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.
So are farmers socially high status in Brazil? Low status? How is a farmer viewed?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Farmers are farmers everywhere in the world. It's like you here.
You were saying this morning that you even have some of the same battles that we do. Corey just shared a post yesterday about nitrates in the water. We're battling this again. There's a public perception, though, of us hurting the environment.
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.
Yeah.
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.
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.
That's why, you know, John is so good at marketing, and they have been for so long. And this summer, they kind of stubbed their toe, right? Like, every news article that came out was laying off people or then their chief tractor officer, and people, like, on social media were really... kind of coming after them. And they're so good at marketing. It almost felt on purpose.
Like, hey, we can't win all the time. Let's set ourselves back here a little bit. It's almost like it was strategic.
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.
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.
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.
So when you've been in the States and you hear the crop, maybe you don't pay that close attention to it. When you hear the crop status reports coming out of South America, how accurate is that information?
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...
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.
So it's really...
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
We've got a couple of engineers that write in all the time to say they listen to us just so they can learn more about where their food comes from. They're not farmers themselves, but they find the content interesting and the educational opportunities to make them more aware of what's going on in the environment rather than just taking what the news says. Right.
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?
Everything is from, you have ate soybeans, right?
Well, and then the people that don't even like meat, where do you get your protein? You know, whey powder and edamame, tofu.
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?
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.
And I think if you can break that, there's that undertow of, like, we think you're a competitor, right? Brazil's a competitor to us because, yeah, you're producing the same thing that we are. But when you start thinking about the technology that's going down there, it's the same thing of, like, well, I can't get any more land up here because the big farmer just takes it from me.
And it's like, well, what good is complaining going to do about it? Figure out how to make it work, right? Create the technology to send down to Brazil. Right. Send...
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
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.
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.
Is that because you haven't maximized your acres yet? Because here, there's not 25 million more acres that we can go grow corn on or soybeans or any other crop. We kind of got to this full. We're full. Now we have to do more with what we have. Right. Right? So that's where I think the technology and innovation comes from. It's like, okay, now we've got to do this better.
There's a lot more focus on ROI. Right.
Well, yeah, because the low-hanging fruit for you is like, can we grow it? We can just go get that other section up there and turn that into soybean ground.
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.
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.
It's integrated livestock, forestry, and cattle. So there are 18 million hackers in Brazil integrating that for you. You can Google about ICLF.
So it's like agroforestry or what do they call that here? We have a name for that of growing livestock in forests and things of that nature.
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.
Right, so to describe this, it's trees, and then it looks like What is that, 20 yards wide?
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.
So I would think the pastures and the forages would do a lot better. You'd have shade for the cattle. And then a lot of that stuff can really take advantage of the shade and then the sun. Whereas us around here, we grow corn. And if it's by trees, usually... It's a big hit to yield because of the tree roots and the shading. Right. So it gets shaded a large portion of the day.
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.
Then you plant a tree that produces nuts like an acorn or something like that.
And then in five years, you can cut that tree and make money.
Well, you can cut the tree and make money, but the livestock can use it as they drop. I was growing some Berkshire hogs, and we were thinking about acorn trees. Like a lot of over in Europe, they'll finish hogs on acorns instead of corn.
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.
I don't know if anyone says the USDA is that successful.
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.
That's cool. Here's a random question.
Do you guys have to have emissions on your diesel engines, on your John Deere tractors? Like a deaf diesel exhaust fluid and all that, the particulate filters? Probably just like here. Really? Yeah, I would say... Because in Australia, you don't have to. Yeah, you don't?
No.
No, there's a lot of countries that you don't have to.
I think it's European really started with that, right? European countries. Yeah.
I was just curious because that adds so much cost to tractors and, well, and just downtime because extra sensors and all this crap that...
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.
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.
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.
I mean, that was an interesting story that you told us at coffee. Is that something you can share about how John Deere came to Brazil?
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.
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?
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
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
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.
SLC John Deere.
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.
1945.
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.
I wonder if Neil Dahlstrom would have any of this information, too. He's head of... What do you call that? John Deere Archives. The Archives. Yeah, he probably knows all of that. So it had a Mercedes engine in... What year was that? Built in Brazil. I lost the years. Sorry, I'm taking notes at the same time.
It had a Mercedes engine before it went to John Deere on the last year that it... That's what it says there, right? I wonder if John Deere took any of your guys' technology in tractors or combines back... with them to the United States.
I don't think so because it's, again, I think... This website really wants to push ads.
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.
I just wondered if there's any... sort of that they did something different on their tractor or, you know, a technology of some sort.
But I do know when we had the nine RX eight 30 release at commodity classic last year, that some of those were tested in South America because you have, like I said, you have season or you don't have the, you can farm full time. Right. Yeah.
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.
There's even an organic company out of Ames that right there over on east or west Lincoln Way, they grow half their seed in Brazil. Harvest it here, take it down, plant it, replicate it, bring it back.
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.
And really, when the seed companies decided to go south to you guys and get those extra growing seasons, it allowed them... Because technology only took them so far in the States, right? Because they only had one growing season a year. Now they could actually...
expedite the process of doing all these hybrids and variety trials and traits and actually so i've grown soybean seed before that had to come from south america right and i came on a boat or a plane was flown in you know so i could plant it on june 5th and i was done planting on may 5th you know but it's it's crazy that that is is available to us now yeah it's cool
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.
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.
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.
I'm excited. I know we only scratched the surface today. I know you've been scratching on your peeper there.
No, I had some other stuff going on. I have hog feed I have to order before 10, and it's 10.09. That was not on the clock, right?
No, that's good. So as we wrap up here, I want you to plug your travel business and let our listeners know how they could find that. And if they want to go to South America, Brazil, Right.
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?
Who? I do. Oh, you do. Who? Who is that?
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.
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.
Yeah.
Well, this has been our pleasure.
Thank you for spending half your day with us. And not probably what you intended, but we've learned so much. It'd be interesting to see if our listeners would want to
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
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.
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
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.
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.
That's the same way, though, in the United States.
There's places you don't go in St. Louis and Chicago. Right.
Louisville?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, Louisville, the liquor store, right off of, yeah, whatever that liquor store was that we about got jumped.
That was a bad move by Tanner.
It was all for a couple bottles of Buffalo Trace.
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.
Yeah, that's great. Awesome. Well, thank you again for spending the time. We learned so much. I know our listeners will too.
Yeah, there's going to be a lot more shows, I think, based on this. What do you say, Corey? Crack a cold one. You deserve it.