If god is Brazilian, as national folklore would have it, His hometown must be Petrolina. That, at least, is the belief of Ar-naldo Eijsink, head of agri-business in Brazil for Carrefour, a French supermarket chain with lots of Brazilian stores. Nature made this district in Brazil's poor northeast an open-air greenhouse, with persistent sun, fertile soil and low humidity, a natural barrier to disease. With the arrival of irrigation, drawn from the Sao Francisco river, in the early 1980s Petrolina became a horticultural prodigy. Grapes mature in 120 days, compared with 180 in the rest of the world, allowing two harvests a year, says Mr Eijsink. Asparagus can be cut twice as often as in temperate climes. Other Brazilians might disagree with Mr Eijsink, but only to assert their region's claim to being agriculture's paradise. The state of Sao Paulo, in the south-east, produces the world's cheapest sugar and orange juice. The endless savannahs of the centre-west are ideal for growing soya, by far Brazil's biggest agricultural commodity. Brazil is the world's largest exporter of beef, coffee, orange juice and sugar, and it is closing fast on the leaders in soya, poul- try and pork. Unlike its competitors, Brazil is not running out of land. Agriculture occupies 60m hectares now; it could stretch out to another 90m hectares without touching the Amazon rainforest, says Silvio Crestana, director of Embrapa, the main agricultural research institute.
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