Mar 30, 2010
Brazil To Dispatch Eight Agricultural Attaches Around The World
Author: Michael Cordonnier/Soybean & Corn Advisor, Inc.
As Brazil grows its agricultural and food production capabilities, they have also decided to take a more direct approach in marketing their products worldwide. In order to achieve those goals, the government, for the first time, is going to dispatch eight agricultural attaches to key consuming countries around the world. The attaches, who are in the final phase of their training, will be sent later this year to Brazilian embassies in the United States, Japan, European Union, Russia, Switzerland, Argentina, Chile, and South Africa. The focus of the attaches will be educating their host country about Brazilian products and to work on eliminating sanitation barriers and tariffs that currently keep out Brazilian products.
Brazilian beef exports will be one of the first issues tackled by the attaches. Large consuming countries such as the United States, Japan, and Korea don't allow imports of Brazilian beef because of foot and mouth disease that was found in Mato Grosso do Sul in 2005. One of the goals of the attaches is to educate the consuming countries that Brazil has many areas that have been free of foot and mouth disease for many years and that they are separated by hundreds or perhaps thousands of miles from the infected areas. They will emphasize that import policies must be based on facts and not misperceptions. If the International Animal Health Organizations certifies that areas of Brazil are free of foot and mouth disease for example, than the importing countries cannot restrict beef imports from all parts of Brazil.
In the meet sector for example (beef, poultry, pork), there is a US$ 20 billion market currently closed to Brazilian products due to sanitization barriers put in place by the principal importing countries. One of the principal countries is Japan that imported US$ 6 billion in beef and pork in 2008, but no imports were allowed from Brazil due to the foot and mouth issue. Another large market is the United States that imported US$ 3.5 billion in meat products in 2008, but the United States is in the final stages of certifying Brazilian meat products for import. Brazilian exporters are not expecting to sell a large volume of their products in the United States, but they are hoping to use the certification from the United States in helping to prey open other restrictive countries.
As part of their preparation, the attaches have meet with export organizations representing beef, sugar, alcohol, soybeans, oranges, coffee, and fruits to lean more about the issues impacting each sector. They have toured meat processing facilities to learn how they have been upgraded to meet international sanitation standards and they are scheduled to visit the Port of Santos (the largest in Brazil) to learn more about how each of these products are handled during shipping.