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Can a new commodities boom revive Brazil?
Roughly every other glass of orange juice drunk around the world comes from the orchards of São Paulo state, boasts Duarte Nogueira.
“We have everything beginning with the letter ‘C’,” says the mayor of Ribeirão Preto, a city four hours inland from the state capital, before reeling off the Portuguese names of produce cultivated in the region.
“Coffee, sugarcane
(cana), citruses, meat
(carne) and cellulose”, the main ingredient for paper. “Agriculture is growing more and more and it is not only a virtue of our region, but of Brazil.”
The South American nation is now one of the world’s top producers of foodstuffs from soyabeans to sugar and beef to bananas. Blessed with an abundance of natural wealth, like vast iron ore deposits and deep sea oil reserves, Brazil also supplies some of the most important raw materials for modern economies.