A Strong Voice For Brazil's Powerful Farmers
In some ways, Katia Abreu is still an old-fashioned farmer, one who rides her chestnut mare, Billy Jean, to tour her farm in Tocantins state in north-central Brazil.
She glides the horse along a gravel road, which soon turns to dirt, and along fields of sorghum and corn. She has plans for more.
"Soon, we're going to produce fish and lamb," she says. "There will be soybeans and fields of tall grass for cattle. Lots of cattle."
Agriculture has boomed in Brazil, and the country now rivals the United States in food production — everything from beef to soybeans, chicken to corn. This has been a key part of Brazil's economic growth in recent years, though it also has environmentalists worried about farms cutting into forests.
The environmentalists are facing one tough farming advocate in Abreu, a senator, landowner and head of the country's most powerful Big Agro association.
This farm, one of three Abreu owns, has 12,000 acres — sizable even by Brazilian standards. And so is Abreu's influence. She's president of Brazil's National Agriculture Confederation, which represents 5 million farmers and ranchers. And she heads the influential Ruralist bloc of land-owning senators and representatives in Congress.
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