Soya bean and sugar production are big business in Brazil. One of the country’s busiest grain processors is located at the port of Santos, just outside the city of Sao Paulo. Up to 700 trucks of grain pass through the TEAG and TEG grain terminals every day.

TEAG and TEG are two of three terminals owned by Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Commodities in Santos, the other being TES. Between the three ports, sugar cane, soybeans and maize are all processed.

Some contractors drive up to 1,500km, spending up to 18 hours on the road to deliver grain to the port. Arriving into the parking area at 6am, drivers face a long wait to be processed and by noon they should reach the discharge bay to unload the grain from the trailer. The same arduous return journey awaits, with most trucks loaded with fertiliser.

Processing

In 2016, 3.1m tonnes of raw sugar was loaded at the TEAG terminal. It can receive 16,000t per day and can load 27,000t, with warehouse capacity of 110,000t.

In 2017 TEG processed 6m tonnes of maize and soya beans. It has a daily capacity to take in 25,000t of grain and can load 35,000t per day. TEG has storage for 90,000t of grains.

Between 60-65% of the soya beans are delivered to the terminal by rail car, with the remainder by truck. For maize, 90% arrives by rail car. On average, the two plants process enough crop to fill nine ships per month. The third terminal, TES, has three warehouses, with a total capacity of 145,000t, with the potential to increase this to 205,000t.

Non-GMO soya beans

A new terminal is being built at TES and next month it will take in 60,000t of non-GMO soybeans.

When asked by the Irish Farmers Journal how the non-GMO soya beans will be kept separate from the GM soya beans, Régis Prunzel, ports manager of TEG, TEAG and TES, said there will be separate trucks and facilities and that TES has been certified to operate a non-GMO system.

He added that there are two ports in Brazil which have the facilities to load non-GMO soya beans without the risk of contamination with GM soya beans. One of these is the facility at Santos.

Sustainability

Prunzel said that when the company buys soya beans from farmers they know they’re coming from a sustainable area and not a deforested region.

“They have signed a document to say that the soya bean was produced in a sustainable way.

“Cargill signed a moratorium on soya beans with growers, which stated that they would not buy soya beans from a deforested area. We have satellites to show that the forested area remains the same. We have a list of producers who didn’t follow the rules and they go on a blacklist for deforestation. They will be on this list for a long time.

“There is a new deforestation code in Brazil, where all farmers need to have at least 20% of their land in forestry. If they don’t have at least 20% of their land planted, we don’t buy from them,” he said.

Soya bean production

Soybean production in Brazil has been on an upward growth trend, with production more than doubling over the last 15 years. In 2004 the Brazilian soya bean harvest was in the region of 50m tonnes – in 2018 this increased to 110m tonnes.

In line with the increase in tonnage, yields have improved dramatically. Since 1981 average soya bean yield has increased from 1,500kg/ha to 3,000kg/ha today.

One of the biggest growth areas for Brazilian farmers has been the export of soya beans to China, which has increased by 85% in the last five years.