From MercoPress:

The production of grains, legumes and oil-seeds this year will be 8.5% greater than in 2009, according to the latest estimate. The previous estimate based on data from January indicated the total crop would reach 143.4 million tons.

Land under cultivation will grow by 1.5% compared with 2009, eventually reaching 47.9 million hectares, said IBGE.

The crop boost this year can be attributed mainly to the 17.4% increase in soybean production and 2.6% increase in corn.

Soybean is the chief crop production of Brazil, accounting for just under half of the total grain and oil seed output.

Soy, corn and rice, the three main crops, occupy 81.5% of all the cropland in the country.

Soybean production this year will reach 66.9 million tons, thanks to improved climatic conditions and the increase in the area under cultivation, while the corn harvest is forecasted in 52.4 million.

Brazil, the world’s top grower and exporter of coffee, will produce 2.8 million tons of beans this year which is 14.4% more by volume than last year.

These positive agricultural numbers bode well for Brazil’s overall economic output since agricultural revenues are a relatively high (compared to the Europe and the US) 6.5% of the country’s overall GDP.

The price of high quality farmland is now generally in the rage of $5,500 – $7,000 per acre in Iowa and $6,200 – $7,500 in Illinois.

“There was a dramatic jump in the last 60 days,” says Loyd Brown, the president of Hertz Farm Management. He says land prices have been rising since 2009, but the biggest increase has occurred in the last 2 months.

Brown sells land to farmers, investors and investment firms. He noticed there was a steady and significant jump when, in a sequence of three auctions he held, land prices jumped up $500 per acre for top quality land.

Most of the buyers are farmers, around 60%-70% of the market, he says. The rest are investment firms and individuals. “Individual investors usually have a background in farming,” he says. He thinks prices are increasing because of low interest rates, the lack of good alternative investments and because a lot of people want tangible, conservative assets. “A lot of people just like buying something that produces food, fiber and fuel,” he said.

Technorati Tags: farmland, tangibe assets, latin america

With the recent earthquake and ongoing aftershocks, however, the Chilean military has begun to redeem itself in the eyes of the citizenry. Outgoing Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has deployed thousands of troops to the hardest hit areas, and they are doing a commendable job of orchestrating search and rescue missions and maintaing security. It is revealing, however, that distrust of the military was strong enough that it took two days of widespread looting and crumpled infrastructure after the quake before President Bachelet was willing to call upon the military for help.

The military’s history might be one of oppression and fear, but residents seem to be thankful for a military presence in this crisis. From the NY Times:

In Chile, the military clearly evokes mixed emotions because of the role it played in the torture and disappearance of some 3,000 Chileans during this country’s bloody 19-year dictatorship.

But in the five days since Chile was shaken by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake, one of the worst natural disasters in its history, the military’s relationship with the country’s people was turning a new page.

Tanks were stationed outside supermarkets that had been looted and vandalized for two days before the troops arrived. Soldiers organized lines for residents to enter banks, pharmacies and gasoline stations. And for the most part, emotional and exhausted residents like Mr. Ramírez embraced them.

…

“The military arrived so late here,” said Mrs. Henríquez, 49. “The looters took everything in this city, even the lights in the supermarkets. It was dreadful. And all because the president was worried about what happened in 1973. We don’t care about that now. We want order, not chaos.”

Venezuela has long been criticized by the US and others for its policy of nationalization, which it has pursued with vigor in industries like telecommunications and oil. Chávez actually nationalized the entire oil industry in 2007, but recently, that trend has begun to change; Chevron inked a deal worth multi-billions of dollars to drill in Venezuela after it submitted the winning bid for some oil blocks in the first oil auction since Chávez took office 11 years ago. A second group of companies, previously highlighted on this blog, won a different set of oil blocks.

According to the NY Times, this deal signals a significant shift in strategy for Venezuela and Chávez.

After clashing with foreign oil companies in recent years, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has shifted strategy and awarded contracts to Western oil companies, hoping to increase his nation’s flagging oil production and pull the country out of a sharp economic downturn.

Chevron, the American oil giant, led a group of companies that won one of the concessions on Wednesday night…

Furthermore, this shift in oil policy may indicate that Venezuela will be seeking warmer relations in general with the United States and other countries that Chávez has been prone to demonizing.

In an unusual display of warmth given his friction with Washington, Mr. Chávez happily greeted a senior Chevron executive in attendance, Ali Moshiri, the company’s president of African and Latin American operations. Mr. Chávez conceded that differences remained with the Obama administration, but he also extended an invitation for President Obama to visit Venezuela’s southern oil region, telling Mr. Moshiri, “You bring him here.”

This latest development in Venezuela may be part of a general shift in Latin America from the left to the center. Other indications of this current centralist trend include the election of a right-wing billionaire in Chile’s presidential election, the strong success of Brazilian President Lula who governed from the center-left, and an overall decline in combative left-right discourse throughout South and Central America.

Even from my experience in US media, Latin America is viewed through the composite lens of illegal Mexican immigration, the anti-Castro Florida lobby and narcotrafficking. As if nothing else exists. Latin American countries, with the exception of Chile, have not aggressively pushed positive P.R. to attract foreign investment. For a changes, here is a Canadian perspective on LatAm.
WSJ.com

More and more Indian companies are looking to do business in Latin America as they seek exposure to growing markets. The ties are also manifesting themselves on a policy level with trade agreements between India and South American countries picking up.

Like those of its Asian neighbor, Indian companies are seeing Latin America as a more secure investment destination, thanks to broadly stable government and economic policies. These markets are also increasingly becoming a potential lifeline as India deals with food shortages and droughts.

“In India, consumption is growing while the land is diminishing but here in Latin America we don’t have any such land-shortage problems,” said Rengaraj Viswanathan, India’s ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, who has been pushing for Indian companies to set up shop in the region.

Indian companies have invested around $9 billion in Latin America during the last several years, according to Viswanathan, and “that number is just going to keep on growing.” The next step in this trend is the agribusiness side, market watchers say.

Shree Renuka Sugars Ltd. (532670.BY) late last year became the first [Indian] agribusiness to enter South America with its takeover of Brazilian Vale Do Ivai SA Acucar E Alcool. The company is eyeing more acquisitions in Brazil, the world’s top sugar producer.

India’s recent transformation from an exporter into an importer of sugar, thanks to rapidly rising domestic consumption, has caused many companies to look outside the country in order to maintain supplies. Ethanol, too, is growing in importance as some Indian states have set mandatory guidelines on ethanol in the fuel supply.It’s a similar case for edible oils, where demand is outstripping domestic production.

As markets stabilized in the last few months of 2009, a series of Indian companies affirmed their plans to increase their exposure to Latin America. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. which already has sizable operations throughout the region, said in September that it was eyeing several acquisition targets. And just recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Tech Mahindra Ltd.  Chief Executive Sanjay Kalra said his firm is “very interested” in mergers and acquisitions in Latin America. Information-technology companies see plenty of opportunity in the region using service centers to tap local customers and also to serve clients in a slowly rebounding U.S. economy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The recent price rise in food items which has caused heartache and wallet-ache for many Indian households is a phenemenon that will worsen in the years ahead. The near quadrupling in the price of toor dal (split pigeon pea) over the last 3 years is only a trailer in the coming horror movie of spiraling food inflation. With Indian incomes forecast to rise over the next decades, food consumption will skyrocket. On the edible oil front, the annual additional deficit of 350,000 to 450,000 tons projected by the Solvent Extractors Association of India is the equivalent of every Indian eating an additional samosa or bhajji every year; this is an exponential increase in demand. The same is the case with pulses and other commodities.

Forgetting the recent blame game for rapid food price in India – accusing politicians, traders, speculators, hoarders for this recent food increase, the main reason has been prolonged underinvestment on the supply side of food production, because Indian farming has been a sector with terrible incentives. Not surprisingly, 45% of Indian farmers want to quit farming. Add to that rapidly falling water tables in North India – India’s bread basket, and erratic monsoons from climate change you have the recipe for domestic food output falling short of demand, repeatedly in the future.

Latin America can meet India’s food needs, a place where agriculture commands the status of IT in India, with the best brains and fortunes in that sector. Indian companies should join US, European companies who have realized this, and participate in the agri value chain there – investing in contract farming to agroinputs to food processing to logistics.

This news can only bolster Brazil’s rising reputation as an energy giant. The country is already a powerhouse of alternative fuels, owing to its status as the world’s second largest producer of ethanol fuel.

Brazilian officials with the state-owned oil company Petrobras have said that they expect to be able to develop the field with little outside help, and Brazil certainly has an interest in keeping profits from the field at home; early estimates are that the field will increase Brazil’s proven reserves to 17.2 billion barrels of oil. While that figure pales in comparison to the reserves of some traditional oil producers like Saudi Arabia (267 billion barrels) and Canada (179 billion barrels), it would put Brazil in front of countries like Mexico, Qatar, and Algeria, and place Brazilians firmly on the list of the largest oil producing nations. Furthermore, there is still potential for the oil field’s reserves to be even larger. Haroldo Lima, the head of the National Petroleum Agency in Brazil, estimated the size at 33 billion barrels, which would put Brazil’s reserves at a whopping 42 billion barrels and push it ahead of countries like Nigeria, Libya, and the United States.

Still, getting to the oil won’t be easy. Since it is a deepwater field, specialized equipment will be necessary. One estimate puts the cost of accessing the oil at $200 billion, which is no small investment, but it’s one that Brazilian officials are taking very seriously. Part of the high cost will be acquiring or building the deepwater rigs that can reach the oil. The rigs are rare and expensive to manufacture, and Petrobras officials have discussed the possibility of building the rigs themselves if necessary, but it is more likely that they would turn to their traditional suppliers in the United States. Similarly, Brazil will need to develop infrastructure to refine the oil. Since the country already does over $2 billion a year in trade of refined oil with India, it is possible that Petrobras might turn to India for expertise in building a refinery in Brazil.

Curiously, there has even been some talk that Brazil might build a nuclear-powered submarine to guard the oil field when extraction begins. This possibility was suggested by Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim, who said that Brazil needs “to choose the padlock that befits the riches in the safe.”

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, but for now it suffices to say that Brazil is already in a great position to assert itself as an energy producing power, and its status is continuing to rise.

For years, Allison Ross rubbed in skin-lightening creams with names like Hyprogel and Fair & White. She said she wanted to even out and brighten the tone of her face, neck and hands. Mrs. Ross, 45, who lives in Brooklyn, also said that she used the lightening creams “to be more accepted in society.”

“I never read the labels,” Mrs. Ross said. Instead, she took her cues from friends, many of them, like her, from the West Indies. “Once somebody told me Fair & White was the one they were using, I’d go to the Korean store and ask for it,” she said.

Dermatologists nationwide are seeing women of Hispanic and African descent, among others, with severe side effects like Mrs. Ross’s from the misuse of skin-lightening creams, many with prescription-strength ingredients, which are sold in beauty shops and bodegas and online.

Users are not necessarily immigrants, said Dr. Eliot F. Battle Jr., who has a dermatology practice in Washington, where he treats side effects from lightening creams “not only containing corticosteroids, but mercury,” a poison that can damage the nervous system. The patients are “Ph.D.’s to women from corporate America, teachers to engineers — the entire broad spectrum of women of color,” Dr. Battle said.

But many others seek to lighten their entire face or large swatches of their body, a practice common in developing countries as disparate as Senegal, India and the Philippines, where it is promoted as a way to elevate one’s social standing. A small percentage of men in such countries also use the creams.

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said it was wrong to assume that skin-lightening was a cultural anachronism or an effort to negate one’s racial heritage. “In fact, it’s a growing practice and one that has been stimulated by the companies that produce these products,” she said. “Their advertisements connect happiness and success and romance with being lighter skinned.”

Moreover, it is not as if dark-skinned women are imagining a bias, said Dr. Glenn, who is president of the American Sociological Association. “Sociological studies have shown among African-Americans and also Latinos, there’s a clear connection between skin color and socioeconomic status.

Transportation networks play a crucial role in human mobility, the exchange of goods, and the spread of invasive species. With 90% of world trade carried by sea, the global network of merchant ships provides one of the most important modes of transportation. Here we use information about the itineraries of 16,363 cargo ships during the year 2007 to construct a network of links between ports.

Technorati Tags: global shipping, trade, South-South

 TreeHugger

Ahmedabad, India, leads the pack as cities in developing nations race ahead of their richer counterparts in adopting eco-friendly transit solutions, according to the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), which last week gave the western Indian city its 2010 Sustainable Transport Award.

The award has been given out since 2005 to a city that best “uses transport innovations to increase mobility for all residents, while reducing transportation greenhouse [gas] and air pollution emissions and increasing cyclist and pedestrian safety and access.” This year, for the first time, all five nominees — Cali, Colombia; Curitiba, Brazil; Guadalajara, Mexico; and Johannesburg, South Africa, in addition to Ahmedabad — were cities in developing countries.

Technorati Tags: urban transit, BRT, Curitiba, Jaime Lerner