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“Get big or get out” was the mantra preached by uS Secretary of Agriculture earl Butz in the 1970s. decades later, farmers in Brazil took that advice to heart. A phalanx of combine harvesters—million-dollar machines that reap, thresh, and clean the grain—loads the soybean crop into trucks on Fazenda Piratini, a 98-square-mile corporate farm in southern Bahia state owned by SLC Agricola. Growing world demand for the nutritious oilseeds—the primary feedstock for pigs and poultry, and a source of cooking oil in much of the world—has driven a ninefold increase in Brazil’s soy production since 1985. Fazenda Piratini is one of many giant farms plowed from native Cerrado savanna and woodlands during the last two decades.

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©2022 George Steinmetz
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Feed the Planet
“Get big or get out” was the mantra preached by uS Secretary of Agriculture earl Butz in the 1970s. decades later, farmers in Brazil took that advice to heart. A phalanx of combine harvesters—million-dollar machines that reap, thresh, and clean the grain—loads the soybean crop into trucks on Fazenda Piratini, a 98-square-mile corporate farm in southern Bahia state owned by SLC Agricola. Growing world demand for the nutritious oilseeds—the primary feedstock for pigs and poultry, and a source of cooking oil in much of the world—has driven a ninefold increase in Brazil’s soy production since 1985. Fazenda Piratini is one of many giant farms plowed from native Cerrado savanna and woodlands during the last two decades.

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