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In AgTech news this week, satellite analysis identified potential crop-area mismatches involving US$440 million in publicly financed soybean operations. CNA launched a WhatsApp-based AI adviser, EarthOptics surpassed 600,000 hectares of Brazilian soil analysis, and Embrapa advanced a process for producing bioinsecticides at industrial scale.

In Climate Tech, 4Wood Biotech plans to invest US$540 million in a bamboo biorefinery in Maranhão. Biodiesel demand is driving a 74% expansion in canola planting, Brazilian researchers are developing a lower-energy route to ammonia, and Yara and Coopercitrus are targeting lower-carbon coffee and cocoa.

In Funding & M&A, financial pressure is spreading through the agricultural-input sector as Essere Group and Sefert seek judicial protection and Heringer negotiates with creditors. 051 Capital is deploying land-backed credit into distressed farms, Suno raised US$11 million for its listed farmland fund, and Amaggi is seeking US$100 million through a CRA.

In Macro & Markets, Europe’s deforestation rules are testing Brazil’s agricultural data infrastructure. Falling fertilizer demand prompted an US$800 million subsidized-credit response, Luft plans 150 local distribution hubs, and drought threatens grain transportation along the Tapajós.

AgTech

• Satellites Flag US$440 Million in Soy-Credit Mismatches

• CNA Launches WhatsApp AI Adviser

• EarthOptics Maps 600,000 Hectares of Brazilian Soil

• Embrapa Advances Industrial Bioinsecticide Production

Climate Tech

• US$540 Million Bamboo Biorefinery Approved

• Canola Planting Jumps 74% on Biodiesel Demand

• Researchers Advance Lower-Energy Ammonia Production

• Yara and Coopercitrus Target Lower-Carbon Coffee and Cocoa

Funding & M&A

• Fertilizer Companies Face Growing Financial Distress

• 051 Capital Deploys US$50 Million into Distressed Farms

• Suno Raises US$11 Million for Farmland Fund

• Amaggi Seeks US$100 Million Through CRA

Macro & Markets

• EUDR Tests Brazil’s Agricultural Data Infrastructure

• Fertilizer Slump Triggers US$800 Million Credit Response

• Luft Plans 150 Local Hubs for 24-Hour Input Delivery

• Tapajós Bottleneck Threatens Grain Exports

AgTech

Satellites Flag US$440 Million in Soy-Credit Mismatches — Serasa Experian used Sentinel-2 imagery and automated crop identification to compare 42,691 publicly financed soybean operations with what appeared to have been planted. While 82.6% showed broad alignment, 17.4% had differences exceeding 10% of the financed area, representing US$440 million in credit. The findings can direct lenders toward operations requiring further investigation but do not independently prove misuse. Source: Forbes Agro

CNA Launches WhatsApp AI Adviser — Brazil’s Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock has launched JoIA, a free AI assistant offering farmers technical, financial and management guidance through WhatsApp. The tool draws on 17 years of production-cost data from CNA’s Campo Futuro project, allowing users to compare regional performance and evaluate input prices and exchange ratios. Integration with Senar content will also direct farmers toward relevant training materials and courses. Source: CNN Brasil

EarthOptics Maps 600,000 Hectares of Brazilian Soil — The US AgTech has analyzed more than 30,000 samples for approximately 700 Brazilian producers since entering the market in 2023. Its platform combines sensors, AI and metagenomics to detect soil characteristics, nematodes and microbial activity, helping farmers target chemical and biological treatments more precisely. EarthOptics, which uses Campinas as its South American laboratory base, is targeting annual regional growth of at least 50%. Source: AgFeed

Embrapa Advances Industrial Bioinsecticide Production — Embrapa and biological-input company Efense have developed a process for producing fungal bioinsecticides through liquid fermentation. Validated in 1,200-litre industrial bioreactors, the method produced up to 2.8 billion fungal cells per millilitre within four days. New formulations remained viable for up to 90 days under refrigeration and achieved 70%–93% mortality against fall armyworm and whitefly in controlled trials, with effectiveness also demonstrated in soybean fields. Source: Embrapa

Climate Tech

US$540 Million Bamboo Biorefinery Approved — Brazil’s Export Processing Zone Council has authorized 4Wood Biotech to install a biorefinery in Bacabeira, Maranhão. The proposed facility would process bamboo biomass into second-generation ethanol and other bioproducts for export, creating a potentially significant new agricultural supply chain in the Northeast. The approval allows the project to operate inside the export zone but does not confirm that financing, construction or feedstock contracting has been completed. Source: MDIC

Canola Planting Jumps 74% on Biodiesel Demand — Rio Grande do Sul’s canola area reached an estimated 366,000 hectares this season as processors increased demand for alternative biodiesel feedstocks. Canola contains approximately twice as much oil as soybeans and is now trading at a premium to the crop it once trailed. As a winter crop, it could also support future sustainable aviation fuel production without replacing the state’s main summer soybean crop. Source: The AgriBiz

Researchers Advance Lower-Energy Ammonia Production — Brazilian researchers found that controlled ageing can improve the productivity of cobalt-oxide electrocatalysts used to convert nitrate pollution into ammonia. Unlike the conventional Haber-Bosch process, the experimental route operates at ambient temperature and pressure and could use renewable electricity. However, ageing also made the catalyst less selective, producing more unwanted compounds. The research identifies ways to improve future catalyst design but remains far from demonstrating commercial cost or scale. Source: FAPESP

Yara and Coopercitrus Target Lower-Carbon Coffee and Cocoa — Yara Brasil and Coopercitrus signed a non-binding agreement to evaluate projects that reduce emissions across coffee and cocoa production. Studies will examine business opportunities involving lower-carbon fertilizers and other technologies and inputs that combine productivity with a smaller environmental footprint. The cooperative already distributes Yara products classified as having very low carbon intensity, while the fertilizer company has similar partnerships across coffee, cocoa and banana supply chains. Source: CNN Brasil

Funding & M&A

Fertilizer Companies Face Growing Financial Distress — Financial pressure is spreading through Brazil’s agricultural-input sector. Essere Group requested judicial recovery with US$44 million in debt, while Sefert entered recovery owing US$48 million. Fertilizantes Heringer has meanwhile requested a 60-day suspension of creditor claims while it begins mediation. The three developments suggest that high interest rates, tighter farm credit and weak input demand are now affecting manufacturers as well as producers. Sources: AgFeed, Globo Rural and CNN Brasil

051 Capital Deploys US$50 Million into Distressed Farms — The investment manager is providing land-backed loans to indebted grain producers, primarily in Matopiba. Typical transactions range from US$4 million to US$8 million, with two years of principal grace and four years to repay. Borrowers pay CDI plus 8% annually and must pledge farmland worth at least 2.5 times the loan. The terms offer breathing room, but only to producers with substantial assets and viable cash flow. Source: The AgriBiz

Suno Raises US$11 Million for Farmland Fund — Suno’s listed SNFZ11 fund increased its equity by 40% after completing a follow-on offering largely supported by one institutional investor. Retail investors contributed only US$160,000, illustrating the difficult fundraising environment for publicly traded farmland vehicles. The proceeds will finance three Mato Grosso farms with 2,200 agricultural hectares, expanding the portfolio to six properties covering 3,800 hectares. Source: The AgriBiz

Amaggi Seeks US$100 Million Through CRA — The agricultural group launched a seven-year agribusiness receivables offering restricted to professional investors. One US$60 million tranche will pay 105% of Brazil’s CDI benchmark rate, while the remaining US$40 million will offer a fixed annual return of 15.10%. The documentation does not clearly specify how the proceeds will be used, although Amaggi recently approved the early redemption of a similarly sized CRA issued in 2024. Source: The AgriBiz

Macro & Markets

EUDR Tests Brazil’s Agricultural Data Infrastructure — From December 30, large and medium companies exporting soy, beef, coffee and other covered products to Europe must provide geolocation and evidence that production did not involve deforestation after 2020. The rules affect Brazilian agricultural exports worth approximately US$25 billion annually. Compliance will require interoperable data, traceability and segregated supply chains, with fragmented sectors and smaller producers facing the greatest difficulty. Sources: UOL Economia and European Commission

Fertilizer Slump Triggers US$800 Million Credit Response — Brazilian fertilizer deliveries could fall from 49 million tonnes in 2025 to between 42 million and 45 million this year as restricted credit and weak margins delay purchases and reduce application. The government has meanwhile allocated US$800 million in subsidized BNDES financing for fertilizer companies, primarily for working capital. Reduced phosphorus use could cut soybean productivity by 5%–7%, particularly on newer agricultural land. Sources: AgFeed and The AgriBiz

Luft Plans 150 Local Input Hubs — Luft Logistics is testing an e-commerce-inspired distribution model that places smaller warehouses closer to farms. Its first mini-hub is operating in Uruçuí, Piauí, with a second under discussion in Jataí, Goiás, and the company could eventually create 100–150 locations. Luft already handles approximately 350,000 agricultural deliveries annually and estimates that its operations touch 30%–40% of Brazil’s fertilizer, crop-protection and foliar-input flows. Source: AgFeed

Tapajós Bottleneck Threatens Grain Exports — Drought and unresolved dredging disputes could disrupt between five million and 5.5 million tonnes of soybeans and corn moving from Mato Grosso through the Arco Norte. Industry groups estimate that redirecting cargo to alternative routes could add US$100 million–US$160 million in logistics costs. The federal government suspended planned maintenance dredging pending environmental licensing and consultation with Indigenous and traditional communities, while arguing that road transport can provide contingency capacity. Source: CNN Brasil

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

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Unwanted Fruit

One of the most promising answers to aviation’s carbon problem may begin with a fruit that many Brazilian farmers have spent years trying to get rid of.

Macaúba is a native palm found across large parts of Brazil. It is thorny, its fruit falls onto pastures, and on many farms it was something to remove, work around or simply ignore. Now it is attracting billions of dollars.

Acelen Renováveis, backed by Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Capital, is trying to turn macaúba into the principal feedstock for a new generation of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF.

The company plans to build a chain stretching from degraded pasture in Minas Gerais and Bahia to a biorefinery beside the Mataripe refinery. The scale alone makes it an ambitious bet, with much depending on whether a largely wild native plant can become a reliable commercial crop fast enough to supply an industry that barely exists today.

Aviation is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize for a simple reason: aircraft need enormous amounts of energy without enormous amounts of weight. Batteries may work for cars and perhaps short regional flights, but they remain impractical for most long-distance aviation. Liquid fuel is difficult to replace at 35,000 feet.

That leaves SAF as one of the few near-term alternatives capable of working in existing aircraft and fuel infrastructure. Governments are now creating demand through regulation. Brazil’s recently regulated ProBioQAV program requires domestic airlines to begin reducing emissions through SAF in 2027, starting at 1% and rising progressively to 10% from 2037.

Mandates, however, can create a market without creating an economical product. SAF remains at least three times more expensive than conventional jet fuel. The International Energy Agency expects global consumption to increase from around one billion litres in 2024 to nine billion litres by 2030, yet even then it would meet only about 2% of aviation fuel demand.

Much of the attention naturally falls on building refineries, although the availability and cost of feedstock may prove every bit as important. Most SAF produced today relies on used cooking oil, animal fats or vegetable oils. These sources can get the market moving, but supplies are limited and many already have competing uses.

Reaching beyond mandates and premium buyers will require crops that produce more oil per hectare, reducing both land requirements and transport costs.

Smart Seed

Acelen estimates that the palm can produce seven to ten times more oil per hectare than soybeans. It is native to Brazil, adapted to tropical and semi-arid conditions, and the project is designed around degraded pasture rather than replacing food crops or native vegetation. Researchers are also examining integration with livestock and higher-value uses for other parts of the fruit.

On paper, it is close to the perfect biofuel crop. The slight inconvenience is that it is not yet really a crop.

Brazil’s success with soybeans, sugarcane and eucalyptus reflects decades of genetic improvement, agronomic research, mechanization, infrastructure and farmer experience. Macaúba is only beginning that process.

Its seeds germinate poorly in nature, and individual palms vary considerably in productivity and oil content. Harvesting has also yet to be proven economically across large commercial areas. A plant that survives in the wild is not automatically one that performs predictably in a farm budget.

To accelerate the work, Acelen created the Agripark research centre in Montes Claros, Minas Gerais, together with Embrapa, universities and other research institutions.

AI-assisted research developed with the State University of Montes Claros has reportedly helped lift germination above 80%, compared with only 3% to 5% in nature.

Automated seed-processing systems can handle up to 1.7 million seeds a month, while the centre is designed to produce 10.5 million seedlings a year. Researchers are also selecting higher-performing genetic material, testing planting arrangements and developing cloning techniques.

AI’s role here is fairly unglamorous, focused on identifying promising plants, improving germination protocols and learning from field data across different soils and climates.

Yet this could be its most useful contribution to SAF, helping reduce the biological variation that makes a wild plant difficult to use as an industrial input. Even with faster analysis, however, the palms still need years to mature, and results from the nursery must be repeated through drought, pests and variable farm management.

Long Haul

Acelen plans to invest around US$3 billion in the integrated project, including approximately US$1.5 billion in a biorefinery in São Francisco do Conde, Bahia. Scheduled to begin operating in 2029, the facility will have capacity to produce one billion litres of SAF and renewable diesel annually.

The industrial timetable is running ahead of the agricultural one. Macaúba will not be available at sufficient scale when the refinery opens, so Acelen has secured used cooking oil from Trafigura and certified soybean oil from Bunge as transitional feedstocks.

These contracts allow the refinery and orchards to develop on different timetables, while also showing how much easier it is to schedule an industrial project than an agricultural one. Construction can follow milestones; a new crop must be tested across soils, seasons and farming systems.

Acelen ultimately expects to develop 144,000 hectares of macaúba across several production hubs in Bahia and northern Minas Gerais. So far, it has acquired roughly 3,000 hectares. Around 20% of production is expected to come through partnerships with small and medium-sized growers, using a model similar to the forestry industry.

Farmers could gain a new source of income from degraded or underused pasture, potentially alongside cattle. Acelen has discussed supplying seedlings, technical assistance and guaranteed purchasing to participating families, but adoption will depend on the terms behind that support.

Who finances establishment before the palms produce? Who carries the risk if yields fall short? How will prices be calculated? Can harvesting and local crushing be done economically? Will carbon income reach the landowner? The answers will shape the business model and determine how much of the early risk sits with growers.

The project has advantages that most new crops lack: a deep-pocketed sponsor, a biorefinery under development, transitional feedstock and Brazil’s new SAF mandate. Even so, the gap between a few thousand acquired hectares and 144,000 productive hectares is enormous.

Few countries are better placed to try. Brazil already knows how to build large biofuel industries, adapt crops to tropical conditions and process agricultural commodities at scale. A successful macaúba chain would create value in genetics, production systems, machinery, carbon measurement and refining, with far more of it remaining in Brazil.

Acelen has already attracted the capital, research partners and buyers needed to get started. We will only know whether macaúba works as a commercial crop after several seasons of consistent yields across much larger areas. Farmers will also need to make money after covering planting, early maintenance, harvesting and transport costs.

In the end, the refinery can make the fuel, but the farmer will decide if it flies.

Thanks for reading.
KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with more than 30 years’ experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in AgriFood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.

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In AgTech news this week, Herdian is using computer vision to prevent newborn piglet deaths, while Brazil’s biodefensives market has reached $1.1 billion. Embrapa has developed a method for predicting technology adoption, and AgRisk has spun out of Nagro to meet demand for agricultural credit intelligence.

Turning to Climate Tech, ZEG is testing whether carbon revenue can compete with soybean expansion in the Amazon. Cattle traceability is extending to indirect suppliers, a strong El Niño is reshaping agricultural risk, and ANAC is preparing detailed SAF compliance rules.

In Funding & M&A, JBS has offered $1.2 billion for the remaining shares in Pilgrim’s Pride, while Agroterenas has secured $32 million to convert degraded pasture into sugarcane without clearing new land.

Across Macro & Markets, Brazil has opened its first large-scale sorghum trade route to China, while Chinese crop-input producer Fuhua is expanding its presence in the country. Argentine corn is challenging Brazilian exports, and seven cooperatives have begun operating a major soybean-processing plant.

AgTech

• Herdian Uses AI to Prevent Piglet Deaths

• Biodefensives Market Reaches $1.1 Billion

• Embrapa Develops Technology-Adoption Method

• AgRisk Spins Out of Nagro

Climate Tech

• Carbon Project Competes with Soy Expansion

• Amazon Cattle Traceability Expands to Indirect Suppliers

• Strong El Niño Reprices Agricultural Risk

• ANAC Prepares SAF Compliance Rules

Funding & M&A

• JBS Offers $1.2 Billion for Remaining Pilgrim’s Pride Stake

• Agroterenas Raises $32 Million for Pasture Conversion

Macro & Markets

• Brazil Opens Sorghum Trade Route to China

• Fuhua Expands in Brazil’s Crop-Input Market

• Argentine Corn Challenges Brazilian Exports

• Cooperatives Begin Operating Soybean Crusher

AgTech

Herdian Uses AI to Prevent Piglet Deaths – Herdian has developed a computer-vision system that monitors farrowing pens and alerts farm staff when newborn piglets are at risk of being crushed by the sow. The Brazilian startup says its technology can reduce mortality while providing producers with data on births, animal behavior and operational performance. The system addresses a costly livestock-management problem using existing camera infrastructure rather than wearable devices. Source: Globo Rural

Biodefensives Market Reaches $1.1 Billion – Brazil’s biodefensives market generated approximately $1.1 billion in the 2025/26 season, as the area treated with biological products increased by 35%. Adoption is expanding beyond soybeans into crops including sugarcane, corn, cotton and coffee, reflecting stronger demand for pest-management tools that can complement chemical inputs. The growth reinforces Brazil’s position as one of the world’s most dynamic markets for agricultural biologicals. Source: AgFeed

Embrapa Develops Technology-Adoption Method – Embrapa and Unicamp researchers have developed a methodology for assessing whether digital agricultural technologies are likely to succeed in specific farming environments. The model examines infrastructure, farm characteristics, users’ capabilities, economics and environmental conditions before a technology is deployed. It could help developers and investors identify adoption barriers earlier, reducing the risk of building products that perform technically but fail to gain traction with farmers. Source: Embrapa

AgRisk Spins Out of Nagro – Brazilian AgFintech, Nagro, has separated its agricultural credit-risk technology into an independent B2B company called AgRisk. Its AgFlow platform has assessed approximately $2 billion in credit this year and serves 1,600 clients, combining financial analysis, collateral monitoring and farm data. The spinout reflects growing demand for specialist risk intelligence as rural credit becomes tighter, while AgRisk is also evaluating the creation of a Fiagro to provide additional funding through its platform. Source: AgFeed

Climate Tech

Carbon Project Competes with Soy Expansion – ZEG has structured a 40-year carbon project protecting almost 6,000 hectares in Roraima that could legally be cleared for soybean production. The landowner will receive 60% of the project’s revenue, although estimated carbon returns remain around 20% below the potential income from soybeans. The project provides a real-world test of whether higher-integrity carbon credits can make standing forest financially competitive with agricultural expansion. Source: Bloomberg Línea

Amazon Cattle Traceability Expands to Indirect Suppliers – From 2027, meatpackers operating in Brazil’s Amazon will begin monitoring cattle acquired through indirect suppliers under agreements with the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office. The change aims to address a major gap in livestock traceability, as animals can move between multiple farms before reaching a slaughterhouse. Bringing breeding and intermediary properties into the system could improve visibility over deforestation risks across the cattle supply chain. Source: Globo Rural

Strong El Niño Reprices Agricultural Risk – Agricultural markets are beginning to incorporate the growing probability of an exceptionally strong El Niño, with Brazilian coffee, wheat and soybean production facing different combinations of excessive rainfall, heat and drought. The elevated risk makes climate forecasting, insurance and farm-level adaptation increasingly important ahead of the next crop cycle, particularly as extreme conditions could affect production across several important agricultural regions simultaneously. Source: InfoMoney

ANAC Prepares SAF Compliance Rules – Brazil’s civil aviation regulator plans to open a 30-day public consultation in September on detailed rules for the country’s sustainable aviation fuel mandate. The proposal will cover emissions accounting, verification and penalties, with final regulations expected in October before the mandate begins in 2027. The framework will influence demand for agricultural feedstocks and certification systems, while providing greater clarity for investment in Brazilian SAF production. Source: Capital Reset

Funding & M&A

JBS Offers $1.2 Billion for Remaining Pilgrim’s Pride Stake – JBS has proposed acquiring the shares it does not already own in US poultry producer Pilgrim’s Pride through an all-stock transaction. The offer would exchange 2.086 JBS shares for each outstanding Pilgrim’s Pride share, giving the proposal an estimated value of $1.2 billion. Full ownership would simplify JBS’s international structure and allow Pilgrim’s Pride to delist from Nasdaq, although the non-binding offer still requires approval from independent directors and minority shareholders. Source: Bloomberg Línea

Agroterenas Raises $32 Million for Pasture Conversion – Agroterenas has raised $32 million through agribusiness receivables certificates to convert degraded pasture into sugarcane fields without clearing native vegetation. The financing will support the company’s expansion in Mato Grosso do Sul, where it plans to increase production while improving land productivity. The transaction illustrates how capital-market instruments can fund agricultural growth through the recovery of previously cleared land rather than further expansion into natural ecosystems. Source: CNN Brasil

Macro & Markets

Brazil Opens Sorghum Trade Route to China – COFCO has dispatched approximately 69,000 tonnes of Brazilian sorghum from Santos to Guangzhou, marking the country’s first large-scale shipment to China following an earlier container-based trial. Commercial access to the world’s largest sorghum importer creates a new export outlet for Brazilian farmers and could strengthen the crop’s role as a lower-risk second-season alternative to corn. Source: COFCO

Fuhua Expands in Brazil’s Crop-Input Market – Chinese crop-input producer Fuhua is expanding its Brazilian presence as it seeks greater recognition among farmers and a larger share of the market. The company is investing in local distribution, regulatory registrations and closer relationships with agricultural retailers. Its strategy reflects a broader shift by Chinese companies from supplying ingredients behind the scenes to establishing their own brands and competing directly for value within Brazil’s agricultural-input market. Source: AgFeed

Argentine Corn Challenges Brazilian Exports – Argentina could export 45 million tonnes of corn and overtake Brazil, intensifying competition as Brazilian shipments to Iran—its largest market in 2025—fell 43% between January and July. Brazil needs to export approximately 40 million tonnes to balance domestic supply, meaning weaker overseas demand could pressure producer margins despite growing consumption from the country’s corn-ethanol industry. Source: Exame

Cooperatives Begin Operating Soybean Crusher – Seven Paraná cooperatives have begun operating a soybean-processing plant acquired from Louis Dreyfus Company in Ponta Grossa. The facility can crush 3,400 tonnes per day and will produce soybean meal, oil and biodiesel feedstock. The jointly owned operation expands farmers’ participation in downstream processing, allowing the cooperatives to capture more value from their soybean production while strengthening their position in animal feed, biofuels and export markets. Source: CNN Brasil

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

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Anyone walking through Agrishow in Ribeirão Preto this year would have noticed some unfamiliar names among the usual machinery giants.

More than 50 Chinese companies occupied a dedicated pavilion, selling everything from tractors and components to irrigation systems and drones. That did not include larger manufacturers such as XCMG and LiuGong, which had their own stands and more established operations in Brazil.

The Chinese presence was still small compared with the sprawling displays of John Deere, Case IH and AGCO. But it was difficult to miss the direction of travel. China is no longer content to wait at the port for Brazilian soybeans to arrive. Its companies are beginning to cross the farm gate.

This week, DBN Biotech revealed plans to enter the Brazilian soybean market, expand into corn and cotton, establish a research centre in Campinas and capture 30% of the country’s agricultural biotechnology market by 2038.

Bound by Soy

For most of the past 25 years, the agricultural relationship between Brazil and China has been fairly straightforward. Brazil produced, China purchased and trade exploded.

At a recent Brazil Climate Solutions event in São Paulo, Marcos Jank of Insper Agro Global showed that Brazilian agricultural exports to China grew from just US$919 million in 2000 to US$55.3 billion in 2025.

Nothing drove that growth more than soy. Exports from the Brazilian soy complex to China increased from US$371 million to US$34.6 billion over the same period. China now buys 65% of Brazil’s soy exports, while Brazil supplies almost 73% of China’s imported soy.

Brazil and China have become the agricultural equivalent of an old married couple. They may occasionally argue, but separating would be expensive for both sides.

China needs Brazil because it cannot produce enough food and animal feed at home. Its agricultural trade deficit reached US$133 billion in 2025, the largest in the world. Brazil had the largest surplus, at US$136 billion. One country’s excess production almost mirrors the other’s shortfall.

China cannot simply grow its way out of the problem. It has limited fertile land and serious water constraints. Its farms are generally small, its rural population is ageing and competition between crops is intense.

While China has expanded its corn area, soybean planting has remained at around nine million hectares for much of the past two decades. Chinese soybean yields are approximately 30 bags per hectare, compared with around 60 in Brazil.

Urbanisation has added to the pressure. China’s urban population grew from around 160 million people in 1975 to more than 950 million in 2025. As people moved to cities and incomes rose, diets changed. More meat, dairy and processed food meant greater demand for soymeal and other animal feeds.

Brazil was ready to supply them. China and Hong Kong now account for one-third of Brazilian agricultural exports, twice the share of the European Union.

For Brazil, feeding the dragon has been very good business.

Beyond the Bean

Trade rarely remains a one-way street forever. China first entered the Brazilian agricultural economy as a buyer. It then became an important supplier of fertilisers, crop-protection products, components and lower-cost equipment. Its companies are now establishing factories, distribution networks, finance operations and research centres.

That shift was on full display at Agrishow this year. Chinese state-controlled equipment manufacturer XCMG is preparing to sell tractors adapted to Brazilian conditions. The company already has a factory in Minas Gerais, a dealer network and even its own bank to finance equipment purchases.

Zoomlion presented tractors ranging from 75 to 350 horsepower, including a hybrid model, and plans to assemble agricultural machinery in Brazil. LiuGong launched four new machines and has built a network of 12 distributors and 48 service points.

Price helps Chinese manufacturers get through the door, but price alone will not keep them there. Brazilian farms are demanding environments. Machines often operate around the clock during narrow planting and harvesting windows, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest major city.

Farmers need spare parts, mechanics, finance and a reasonable resale value. A cheap tractor becomes expensive very quickly if it is sitting idle during harvest.

Chinese companies appear to understand this. The more serious players are shifting from simply exporting equipment to building the local infrastructure needed to support it. They are also adapting products to Brazilian crops, farm sizes, fuels and operating conditions.

Metal to Molecule

The bigger prize, however, may lie inside the seed. DBN has already received regulatory approval in Brazil for soybean technology offering insect resistance and tolerance to widely used herbicides.

Farmers buy tractors once every several years. A successful biotechnology trait can generate royalties across millions of hectares, season after season.

Until now, most of China’s money entered the chain after the soybean left the farm. DBN wants to start earning before the seed enters the ground.

This isn’t China’s first move into agricultural genetics. Syngenta has been Chinese-owned since its acquisition by ChemChina. CITIC also entered the Brazilian seed industry through the acquisition of Dow’s corn-seed business, which became part of LongPing High-Tech.

What makes this latest move different is that it brings home-grown Chinese biotechnology into one of the world’s largest markets for genetically modified crops. DBN’s proposed Campinas research centre also suggests that Brazil will be more than a sales territory. It will be a base for adapting and developing technology for tropical agriculture.

For Brazilian farmers, greater competition could be welcome. The biotechnology market is concentrated, and more suppliers could mean better products, more choice and lower costs.

Value Subtracted

Brazil’s problem is not that it exports commodities. It is that it captures too little of the value created around them.

In another of Jank’s charts, Brazil had almost caught the United States in agricultural commodity exports. When it came to higher-value agricultural specialities, the gap was enormous. The United States exported around US$65 billion. Brazil barely registered.

Brazil has become very good at exporting what grows in the field. It has been much less successful at exporting what comes out of the laboratory.

China has clearly spotted the opportunity to capture more of that value. It may never eliminate its dependence on Brazilian soybeans, but its companies can earn money from the genetics, machinery and technology used to produce them.

Brazil should treat this influx as more than another wave of imports. Chinese companies need access to its farmers, tropical growing conditions, research capabilities and enormous agricultural market. That gives Brazil leverage to attract investment and partnerships that also help build its own technology companies.

Otherwise, it risks remaining the world’s most sophisticated supplier of commodities while companies from elsewhere collect the royalties.

For 25 years, Brazil has sold China the harvest. Now China wants to sell Brazil what it needs to produce it.

Thanks for reading.
KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with more than 30 years’ experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in AgriFood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.

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In Brazil AgTech news this week, Chinese agribusiness giant DBN is targeting 30% of Brazil’s soybean-biotech market, while Cogny has registered the country’s first locally developed metabolite-based biofungicide. Embrapa has identified nitrogen-fixing bacteria with potential use in cotton bioinputs, and a new study estimates AI could add $10 billion to Brazilian agriculture by 2030.

In Climate Tech, Brazil has introduced rules for SAF, carbon capture and low-carbon hydrogen, while the STF has upheld the Soy Moratorium. Amazon deforestation alerts have fallen 37%, international carbon-credit sales are moving closer, and Brazilian agricultural capital is expanding into Bolivia.

In Macro & Markets news, the Senate has approved up to $2 billion in incentives for domestic fertilizer production. Rising judicial-recovery filings and a new rural-debt restructuring program reveal growing financial pressure across the sector, while a $244 billion logistics plan sets out a longer-term route for improving infrastructure.

AgTech

• DBN Targets 30% of Brazil’s Soybean Biotech Market

• Cogny Registers Brazil’s First Metabolite-Based Biofungicide

• AI Could Add $10 Billion to Brazilian Agriculture

• Embrapa Finds Nitrogen-Fixing Bacteria in Cotton

• Nestlé, Carrefour and Ourofino Seek AgTech Solutions

Climate Tech

• Brazil Regulates SAF, Carbon Capture and Low-Carbon Hydrogen

• STF Upholds the Soy Moratorium

• Brazilian Agricultural Capital Expands into Bolivia

• Amazon Deforestation Alerts Fall 37%

• Brazil Prepares International Carbon-Credit Sales

Macro & Markets

• Brazil Approves $2 Billion Fertilizer-Incentive Program

• Rural-Debt Restructuring Targets Mounting Credit Stress

• Judicial-Recovery Filings by Farmers Jump 73.5%

• Brazil Launches $244 Billion Logistics Plan

AgTech

DBN Targets 30% of Brazil’s Soybean Biotech Market – Chinese agribusiness group DBN plans to capture 30% of Brazil’s soybean-biotechnology market, challenging Bayer, Corteva, BASF and Syngenta. The Shenzhen-listed company will establish an R&D center in Campinas, beginning with a molecular-biology laboratory for GM crops. Fieldwork on its first herbicide-tolerance and insect-control platforms starts this year, ahead of a planned 2028 commercial launch. Its pipeline also includes traits targeting stink bugs, rust and nematodes. Source: Forbes Agro

Cogny Registers Brazil’s First Metabolite-Based Biofungicide – Cogny has received regulatory approval for Metabolic Protection, the first biofungicide based entirely on metabolites developed in Brazil. Unlike conventional biological products that apply living microorganisms, the technology delivers approximately 40 bioactive molecules directly to the plant. More than 20 act against fungi, while another 17 stimulate the plant’s natural defenses. Developed over five years with Cogny’s R&D arm Orygen, the product will initially target soybean diseases, with potential expansion into cotton and beans. Source: AgFeed

AI Could Add $10 Billion to Brazilian Agriculture – Artificial intelligence could add $10 billion to Brazilian agriculture between 2027 and 2030, according to a study by Reglab commissioned by OpenAI. Around 92% of the projected gains would come through more efficient machinery, equipment and production systems rather than office-based automation. The estimate points toward AI becoming embedded in tractors, sensors and farm operations, although limited rural connectivity and uneven access to modern equipment could slow adoption. Source: Exame Agro

Embrapa Finds Nitrogen-Fixing Bacteria in Cotton – Embrapa researchers have identified bacteria capable of converting atmospheric nitrogen into forms cotton plants can absorb. In controlled tests, inoculated plants developed similarly to those receiving recommended nitrogen fertilization. The bacteria were isolated from tree-cotton roots and tested on commercially grown upland cotton, opening a possible route toward bioinputs that reduce fertilizer costs, imports and emissions. The findings remain preliminary, with further strain evaluation and product development required before commercial use. Source: Embrapa

Nestlé, Carrefour and Ourofino Seek AgTech Solutions – Nestlé, Carrefour and Ourofino have presented new challenges for the fourth AptaHub Conecta open-innovation program. Nestlé is seeking continuous coffee-crop monitoring, Carrefour wants intelligent label-verification tools, and Ourofino is looking for technologies to improve pig-production efficiency without ractopamine. Applications remain open until August 31. Previous editions have trained 95 science-based startups and generated 27 commercial connections with participating companies. Source: Globo Rural

Climate Tech

Brazil Regulates SAF, Carbon Capture and Low-Carbon Hydrogen – Brazil has issued long-awaited decrees establishing frameworks for sustainable aviation fuel, carbon capture and storage, and low-carbon hydrogen. The SAF rules create a certification system and allow environmental attributes to be traded separately through book-and-claim, while CCS gains rules covering permits, pipelines and underground monitoring. The hydrogen program provides for $3.5 billion in tax credits. Agricultural residues, ethanol and vegetable oils could become important feedstocks, although further ANP and Anac regulations are still required. Source: Capital Reset

STF Upholds the Soy Moratorium – Brazil’s Supreme Court has ruled that the Soy Moratorium is legal and compatible with the Forest Code, rejecting claims that the agreement constitutes a cartel. The court also ordered the termination of related compensation cases and proceedings before Cade and other authorities. Established in 2006, the private agreement prevents participating traders from purchasing soy grown on Amazon land cleared after July 2008, imposing environmental requirements that extend beyond Brazil’s general land-use rules. Source: CNN Brasil

Brazilian Agricultural Capital Expands into Bolivia – Brazilian soybean and cattle investors are moving into Bolivia, attracted by cheaper land, new transport links and more permissive clearing rules. Much of the expansion is occurring in Chiquitania, a biodiverse dry-forest region connected to the Amazon basin. Bolivia lost around one-sixth of its tree cover between 2001 and 2025 and recorded the world’s second-largest tropical-forest loss last year. The movement raises concerns that agricultural expansion and deforestation pressure could migrate across the border as Brazil tightens domestic enforcement. Source: Bloomberg Línea

Amazon Deforestation Alerts Fall 37% – Deforestation alerts in Brazil’s Amazon covered 2,874 square kilometres between August 2025 and July 2026, down 37% from the previous twelve months. This was the lowest level recorded by the current Deter monitoring system, which began in 2015, and suggests Brazil could approach its lowest official annual deforestation rate since 1988. Deter provides rapid alerts for enforcement, while the higher-resolution Prodes system will produce the definitive annual estimate later this year. Source: Bloomberg Línea

Brazil Prepares International Carbon-Credit Sales – Brazil could begin authorizing advance sales of internationally transferable carbon credits in 2027 or 2028, before its regulated emissions market becomes fully operational in 2031. The Finance Ministry is revising proposed rules after a public consultation received 2,532 submissions, with project developers concerned about missing near-term international demand. Implementation still requires approved methodologies, a national compensation program and a central registry. Earlier authorization could help attract capital to forestry, restoration and agricultural carbon projects seeking access to Article 6 markets. Source: Capital Reset

Macro & Markets

Brazil Approves $2 Billion Fertilizer-Incentive Program – Brazil’s Senate has approved Profert, offering up to $2 billion in federal tax credits over five years for new fertilizer factories and the expansion or modernization of existing plants. The program covers synthetic, mineral and organic fertilizers, as well as remineralizers, bioinputs and biofertilizers. Designed to reduce Brazil’s dependence on imports, which supply roughly 85% of domestic fertilizer demand, the legislation now moves to presidential approval. Source: Senate

Rural-Debt Restructuring Targets Mounting Credit Stress – Brazil has authorized subsidized interest rates for a new rural-debt restructuring program, with ten financial institutions participating and contracts available through November 12. Banco do Brasil estimates that as much as $20 billion of its agricultural loan portfolio could qualify, illustrating the scale of the financial pressure created by high costs, weak margins and successive crop losses. Actual uptake will depend on eligibility reviews, bank execution and budget availability. Source: CNN Brasil

Judicial-Recovery Filings by Farmers Jump 73.5% – Brazilian agricultural producers operating as companies filed 196 judicial-recovery requests during the first quarter of 2026, up 73.5% year on year. Soybean growers accounted for 137 filings and cattle producers for 42. Including individual farmers and companies elsewhere in the agribusiness supply chain, filings reached 474, an increase of 21.9%. Mato Grosso led the country with 135 cases, followed by Goiás with 73. Source: Exame

Brazil Launches $244 Billion Logistics Plan – Brazil’s new National Logistics Plan identifies a potential $244 billion investment portfolio through 2050, spanning 42 logistics corridors across the country. Around $147 billion is expected to come from private capital and $98 billion from public funding. The plan seeks to lower transport costs and reduce the freight system’s reliance on roads by expanding rail and waterway integration. The figures represent potential projects rather than committed investment, with priorities still to be defined through sector-specific plans. Source: Agência iNFRA

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

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In Brazil AgTech news this week, Embrapa is bringing biological innovation closer to home with Brazil’s first international depository for patentable microorganisms, while Argentine startup Calice uses virtual trials to accelerate product development. Another Argentine startup, Agrofy, is retreating from Brazil to rethink its model around AI.

In Climate Tech, açaí pits are being transformed into nanofertilizer, while Tello scales organic-coated fertilizers designed to improve nutrient efficiency. Itaú is backing regenerative agriculture in the Cerrado as Brazil assesses the carbon-market potential of better farming practices.

In Funding & M&A, Vibra Foods has bought back Tyson Foods’ 40% stake, returning the poultry producer to full Brazilian ownership. Itaú is launching the country’s largest FIAGRO, targeting up to $1 billion in agricultural credit assets.

In Macro & Markets, Brazil’s agricultural cooperatives are approaching $100 billion in annual revenue, but fertilizer deliveries and domestic production have fallen sharply. Meanwhile, Chinese agrochemical companies are moving beyond generics to launch their own brands—and eventually patented products—in Brazil.

AgTech

• Embrapa to Host Brazil Microorganism Depository

• Calice Brings Virtual Crop Trials to Brazil

• Biologicals Find Fertile Ground in Paraguay

• Brazil’s AgTech Ecosystem Grows 84% in Six Years

• Agrofy Retreats from Brazil to Bet on AI

• CNH Named Brazil’s Most Innovative Company

Climate Tech

• Açaí Waste Powers Nanofertilizer

• Tello Scales Biointelligent Fertilizer Production

• São Paulo Climate Week Seeks Its Own Identity

• Itaú Backs Regenerative Farming in the Cerrado

• Brazil Ag Could Generate 314 Million Carbon Credits

Funding & M&A

• Vibra Foods Buys Back Tyson’s 40% Stake

• Itaú Launches Brazil’s Largest FIAGRO

Macro & Markets

• Brazil’s Agricultural Cooperatives Near $100 Billion

• Brazil’s Fertilizer Deliveries Fall 14.7%

• Chinese Agrochemical Makers Move Beyond Generics

AgTech

Embrapa to Host Brazil Microorganism Depository — Embrapa will establish Brazil’s first International Depositary Authority for microorganisms used in biotechnology patent applications. Backed by approximately US$3 million from Finep and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the three-year project will allow biological samples to be deposited domestically rather than sent abroad. Once accredited under the Budapest Treaty, Brazilian deposits will be recognized across 92 member countries, reducing costs and delays while strengthening protection for innovations in bioinputs, microbial pesticides and other biological technologies. Source: Forbes

Calice Brings Virtual Crop Trials to Brazil — Argentine startup Calice uses AI and computational modelling to simulate how seeds, biologicals and crop-protection products perform across different environments, reducing the time, cost and risk of physical trials. Its platform has helped identify around 40% more commercial soybean candidates using roughly half the test sites. Backed by a US$2.5 million seed round, Calice already works with Syngenta, BASF, Corteva and other major players and expects Brazil to generate 40% of its global revenue within five years. Source: AgFeed

Biologicals Find Fertile Ground in Paraguay — Brazilian biological-input companies Agrivalle and Gênica are expanding in Paraguay, attracted by lower interest rates, cheaper energy, faster product registration and growing farmer appetite for technology. Adoption remains below Brazil’s level, but the companies see faster growth potential in soybeans and corn. Agrivalle is strengthening distribution through Agrotec, while both businesses are evaluating opportunities in the emerging Chaco agricultural frontier. Source: The AgriBiz

Brazil’s AgTech Ecosystem Grows 84% in Six Years — The number of Brazilian AgTech startups increased from 1,125 in 2019 to 2,075 in 2025, according to Radar AgTech Brasil. The ecosystem grew another 5% last year as startups expanded across precision agriculture, AI, biotechnology, bioinputs, traceability, finance and carbon markets. Farms, cooperatives and agribusinesses are also becoming active testing grounds for new technologies, helping startups validate solutions and connect them with producers’ needs. Source: Portal do Agronegócio

Agrofy Retreats from Brazil to Bet on AI — Agrofy has suspended its Brazilian operations and cut its remaining local team after raising more than US$65 million to build the “Mercado Libre of agriculture.” Once responsible for 40% of the marketplace’s business volume, Brazil lost momentum as the agricultural inputs and machinery markets weakened. Agrofy will now concentrate on Argentina and AI, with plans to return through a new business model and potential partnerships. Source: AgFeed

CNH Named Brazil’s Most Innovative Company — Agricultural machinery maker CNH topped the Valor Inovação Brasil 2026 ranking after outperforming 269 other companies. CNH said it has used the sector’s worst downturn in 15 years to develop solutions that deliver lasting efficiency gains rather than relying solely on cost cuts. Cargill Nutrition and Animal Health led the agribusiness category, while Indovinya won in chemicals. Source: Globo Rural

Climate Tech

Açaí Waste Powers Nanofertilizer — Embrapa and the Federal University of Ceará have developed a nanofertilizer from discarded açaí pits that increased corn growth by 24% and sorghum growth by 164% in initial tests. Applied at just 10 milligrams per liter, it also boosted root growth by 23% and 59%, respectively. The technology could turn plentiful agroindustrial waste into a lower-dose fertilizer with less runoff, although scaling production beyond the laboratory remains a challenge. Source: Embrapa

Tello Scales Biointelligent Fertilizer Production — Created by Coopercitrus, Amaggi, Tecnobeef, AgroCP and two farming families, Tello has invested R$180 million in its first São Paulo plant and plans a similar facility in Mato Grosso. Its organic-coated fertilizers could improve phosphorus-use efficiency by up to 50% and reduce potassium and nitrogen use by around 30%. Each plant is expected to produce 300,000 tonnes annually and generate up to R$900 million in revenue at full capacity. Source: AgFeed

São Paulo Climate Week Seeks Its Own Identity — São Paulo Climate Week brought together around 300 activities across 30 venues from August 3–7 under a new unified structure. Now led by OFuturo, the event is building a distinctly Latin American agenda around six themes, including agriculture and food systems, biodiversity and climate finance. Working groups will continue developing projects, partnerships and funding opportunities after the week ends. Source: Capital Reset

Itaú Backs Regenerative Farming in the Cerrado — IDB Invest has approved a US$30 million loan to Itaú to finance regenerative practices among soybean farmers, with total support potentially reaching US$59 million. The six-year program initially targets 200,000 hectares, potentially expanding to 600,000, and could mobilize R$1 billion. Credit will support cover crops and bioinputs, alongside technical assistance and systems to monitor soil quality, emissions and deforestation. Source: Capital Reset

Brazilian Agriculture Could Generate 314 Million Carbon Credits — Brazil’s agricultural sector could generate up to 314.3 million carbon credits by 2035, potentially worth R$3.5 billion, according to an ABAG-backed study. Improved cropland management represents the largest opportunity, alongside animal-waste methane recovery, enteric methane reduction and biochar. However, revenues depend on regulation, international demand and government authorization of credits under the Paris Agreement. Source: Forbes

Funding & M&A

Vibra Foods Buys Back Tyson’s 40% Stake — Vibra Foods has returned to full Brazilian ownership after repurchasing the 40% stake acquired by Tyson Foods in 2020. The undisclosed deal ends the joint venture but preserves the companies’ commercial partnership. During Tyson’s investment, Vibra deployed more than R$500 million, expanded exports to around 80 countries and grew its workforce from 4,000 to nearly 7,000. The company now plans further international expansion and acquisitions. Source: CNN Brasil

Itaú Launches Brazil’s Largest FIAGRO — Itaú aims to raise up to R$4.85 billion through a fund that will acquire agricultural credit assets, including CRAs, LCAs and CPRs, originated within the bank’s own ecosystem. The structure allows Itaú to recycle capital into new rural lending while offering investors four maturities paying 91.5% to 93% of the CDI. Investor protection includes subordinated units held by Itaú and the repurchase of defaulted assets. Source: AgFeed

Macro & Markets

Brazil’s Agricultural Cooperatives Near $100 Billion — Brazil’s agricultural cooperatives generated $100 billion in revenue in 2025, up 11.2% after growth of just 1.9% in 2024. The rebound was driven by stronger prices for coffee, poultry, pork and agricultural inputs, alongside increasingly diversified operations. The country’s 1,254 agricultural cooperatives now represent 1.13 million members, employ 277,226 people and account for 10.3% of Brazilian agribusiness exports. Source: AgFeed

Brazil’s Fertilizer Deliveries Fall 14.7% — Fertilizer deliveries fell to 3.16 million tonnes in May, while domestic production dropped 26.2% and imports declined 9.4%. ANDA attributed the slowdown to geopolitical tensions, unfavorable barter ratios, scarce credit, high interest rates and El Niño risks. Domestic production fell 17.1% during the first five months of 2026, partly due to higher sulfur prices. Source: CNN Brasil

Chinese Agrochemical Makers Move Beyond Generics — Chinese suppliers already account for an estimated 85% of Brazil’s crop-protection chemicals and active ingredients, but are now pushing their own brands and preparing to introduce patented molecules and biopesticides. Nearly 70% of exhibitors at São Paulo’s Agrochemshow were Chinese. Rainbow reportedly generates over US$700 million in Brazil, while Synwill plans to expand locally as manufacturers move closer to Brazilian customers. Source: AgFeed

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

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I once spent a day with Erai Maggi, the lesser-known cousin of Blairo Maggi, Brazil’s so-called King of Soybeans. At the time, Erai had already built an operation of around 800,000 acres in Mato Grosso.

But what made the day memorable wasn’t the size of the farm. It was that a small team from Rabobank was shadowing him the entire time, firing off question after question, with Erai answering each one off the top of his head.

That part isn’t unusual. Farmers, even big ones, still carry most of their operation in their heads. Ask about a particular field, harvest or machinery problem from several years ago, and many can recall the details instantly, especially if it was a painful memory.

What was unusual was that Rabobank could dedicate an entire team of analysts to spending the day on his farm. For a farmer the size of Erai Maggi, the bank spared no expense getting to know its customer. Not just for regulatory box-ticking. It made straightforward business sense.

The average farmer does not receive the same red-carpet treatment. There is no team of analysts walking the fields, no long discussion about planting decisions and no detailed assessment of how well the operation is managed.

The bank may know the crop, the region, the size of the property, the collateral and whether previous loans have been repaid. The farmer himself largely disappears.

Basket Case

Most farmers get treated like the commodities they grow. They’re priced as a basket of risk, with the weaker and less visible farmers pushing up the cost for everyone else. The best farmers end up subsidising the worst ones.

Banks have good reasons to be wary of farming. It is seasonal, exposed to weather and full of things that can go wrong between planting and payment, even when the farmer makes the right decisions.

The deeper problem is that banks have never been particularly good at measuring this risk. They can see the land, check repayment history and ask for guarantees, but struggle to see whether the farmer plants on time, uses inputs well and produces consistently.

Banks therefore fall back on what they can measure, usually land, collateral and scale. This naturally favours larger farmers, who have more assets to pledge and loans large enough to justify detailed analysis.

Two producers may grow soybeans in the same municipality but operate very differently. One may plant early, control costs and consistently produce above-average yields. The other may plant late, use inputs poorly and deliver erratic results.

Without enough information, both can still look much the same to a traditional lender, leaving the stronger farmer paying more than his individual risk profile would justify.

Ground Truth

That gap is starting to close as farming becomes more digital. Satellite imagery can show when a crop is planted, how it develops and when it is harvested. Farm-management systems, connected machinery, digital marketplaces and electronic transactions add further evidence of how the business is being run.

Together, they create a digital trail that lenders can follow across thousands of farms. One strong harvest may be luck, but consistent performance across different conditions says much more about the farmer’s ability to manage risk.

Digital technology makes production risk easier to measure and helps distinguish regional problems from those linked to the way an individual farm is managed.

By combining this operational data with traditional financial information, AgFintechs can assess not only the borrower, but also the productive operation expected to repay the loan.

Farmers already manage different fields in different ways. Finance is now starting to apply the same thinking to individual farmers.

A smaller farmer with a strong production record may be a safer borrower than a larger neighbour with more land but weaker management. Credit can begin to follow capability rather than just acreage and collateral.

Better information allows lower-risk farmers to receive larger limits, faster decisions or better rates, while weaker applicants can be monitored more closely or left out of the portfolio.

The lender gets a better-performing loan book, while the farmer receives finance that reflects how the operation is run. Good farming begins to matter more than size alone.

That can create an upward spiral. Better-financed farmers can invest in seed, inputs, irrigation, storage, machinery, technical advice and AgTech solutions.

Those investments improve productivity and resilience, while producing even more information through digital purchases, connected machinery and management systems.

The farmer becomes easier to understand, improving the next credit decision and potentially lowering the cost of future finance. Better data supports better credit, better credit supports better farming, and better farming produces more data.

The old model often works in reverse. Poor visibility raises the cost of credit, limiting the investment needed to improve both production and visibility, and reinforcing the belief that agriculture is simply too risky.

Growing Apart

Brazil has also seen what happens when agricultural distribution and credit try to scale before anyone finds a replacement for local knowledge.

The traditional input retailer often knows the farmer personally: who pays late but always pays, who is expanding too quickly and which family has managed the same property well for generations.

It is not a sophisticated credit model, but it contains valuable information that rarely appears in formal records. Companies such as AgroGalaxy and Lavoro set out to bring regional retailers together under larger platforms, gaining scale in purchasing, distribution and farmer finance.

The challenge is that consolidation can weaken the relationships on which many original credit decisions depend. The customer remains on the system, while much of the context disappears.

The problems later faced by these businesses have several causes, including leverage, working-capital pressure and difficult market conditions. But they raise a wider question: what happens when exposure to thousands of farmers grows faster than the ability to understand their production risk?

The old retailer model is personal but difficult to scale. Consolidation creates scale but risks losing the personal touch. Data-driven underwriting may be the missing bridge, preserving local visibility across a much larger network.

The same logic could also help solve one of AgTech’s biggest problems: adoption. Farmers often have to pay today for benefits that may only appear after harvest. Embedded finance can help close that gap by matching the cost more closely with the expected return.

An AgTech company with a trusted network of farmers and good visibility into production risk does not need to become a bank. It can partner with a bank, credit fund, input supplier or specialist lender.

Its data can improve underwriting, its platform can distribute the finance and the finance can help farmers adopt the technology. Farm-management platforms, satellite companies and grain marketplaces each have a different view of whether the farmer is likely to produce and repay.

Used properly, that information can make embedded finance a natural part of the business model rather than an unrelated product added later.

Beyond the Basket

AgFintech may provide the financial layer that helps the rest of AgTech scale.

For investors, Nubank offers a useful comparison. It started with a simple credit card and grew by serving people who had long been overcharged and underserved by traditional banks.

Agriculture offers a similar opportunity, with one important difference: AgFintechs can potentially understand not only the borrower, but also the productive activity expected to repay the loan.

The same farm data may eventually support other sources of revenue, from crop insurance and sustainability-linked credit to traceability, environmental service payments and the measurement and verification of farming practices.

A digital record showing that a farmer is a good credit risk may also help demonstrate compliance with evolving ESG standards, including how the farm protects soil, uses water more efficiently or reduces chemical inputs. Once the farm becomes visible, the same information can do several jobs.

Twenty years ago, knowing one farmer properly might have required a team of international analysts following him around Mato Grosso for the day.

Technology can increasingly provide a similar level of visibility across thousands of farms. Ordinary farmers no longer need to disappear inside a risk basket, and credit can begin reflecting how well they farm rather than simply how much land they own.

Banks once knew the basket. AgFintech may finally allow them to know the farmer.

Thanks for reading.

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.

In this week’s Brazil AgTech news, Label Rouge is targeting premium consumers with milder-smelling free-range eggs, while Embrapa has trained AI models to identify drought-tolerant corn with more than 90% accuracy. A new $2 billion credit line could accelerate adoption of locally developed agricultural technology, and Cummins is preparing to expand into tractors, battery storage and lower-emission farm energy.

In Climate Tech, indigenous Brazil nut producers in Rondônia are receiving additional payments for conserving forests and biodiversity. Maringá will host Brazil’s first blue-economy innovation cluster, WRI Brasil is proposing a unified traceability framework for soy and beef, and federal agencies have introduced common standards for measuring native vegetation restoration across all six Brazilian biomes.

In Funding & M&A, Mantiqueira is returning to the capital markets with a $30 million offering, Symbiosis is seeking $100 million to scale its native-forest timber and carbon model, and Coamo is acquiring and leasing more assets from financially troubled Belagrícola as it expands across Paraná.

In Macro & Markets, China has signalled that it may increase fertilizer shipments to Brazil as more than 6.1 million tonnes move through the country’s import pipeline. The combination offers some reassurance ahead of the next planting season, although Brazil’s heavy reliance on imported nutrients continues to leave farmers exposed to geopolitics, logistics and global prices.

AgTech

• Label Rouge Targets Premium Egg Market With Odor-Free Product

• Cummins Targets Brazil’s Agricultural Machinery and Energy Markets

• AI Identifies Drought-Tolerant Corn With Over 90% Accuracy

• Brazil Launches $2 Billion Credit Line for Agricultural Innovation

Climate Tech

• Indigenous Brazil Nut Producers Receive Environmental-Service Payments

• Portuguese Group Selects Maringá for Brazil’s First Blue-Economy Cluster

• WRI Calls for Single Traceability Framework for Soy and Beef

• Brazil Sets National Rules for Native Vegetation Restoration

Funding & M&A

• Mantiqueira Returns to the CRA Market With $30 Million Offering

• Symbiosis Seeks $100 Million to Scale Native-Forest Timber Model

• Coamo Expands Through Acquisition of Belagrícola Assets

Macro & Markets

• China Signals More Fertilizer Supply as Brazilian Imports Accelerate

AgTech

Label Rouge Targets Premium Egg Market With Odor-Free Product - Brazilian egg producer Label Rouge has developed what it says are the country’s first free-range eggs without the strong smell often associated with eggs. The company attributes the milder aroma, redder yolks and firmer whites to outdoor rearing, plant-based feed and tighter quality controls. With Brazilian egg consumption expected to exceed 300 per person in 2026, Label Rouge is betting that sensory quality, animal welfare and product differentiation can support a more premium positioning in a fast-growing market. Source: Globo Rural

Cummins Targets Brazil’s Agricultural Machinery and Energy Markets - Cummins is expanding its agricultural business in Brazil after sales of engines and power generators to the sector rose more than 20% in 2025. The company plans to enter the tractor market from 2028 through an engine being validated with XCMG, while also growing sales of generators, microgrids and battery-storage systems for farms and agribusinesses. Cummins is adapting engines for ethanol, biomethane and higher biodiesel blends, and expects agricultural demand to rise as rural operations require more reliable and lower-emission energy solutions. Source: AgFeed

AI Identifies Drought-Tolerant Corn With Over 90% Accuracy - Embrapa and researchers at Brazil’s Center for Research in Genomics Applied to Climate Change have developed a system combining drones, multispectral sensors and artificial intelligence to identify corn hybrids that are more tolerant to drought. Tested on 28 hybrids over two years, the models reproduced conventional field assessments with accuracy above 90% in some scenarios. The approach could allow breeding programs to screen thousands of plants more quickly, reducing manual measurements and accelerating the development of climate-resilient cultivars. Source: Canal Rural

Brazil Launches $2 Billion Credit Line for Agricultural Innovation - Brazil’s National Monetary Council has approved a credit line of up to $2 billion to finance locally developed agricultural technology and equipment. Managed by Finep and partner financial institutions, the funding will support machinery, precision agriculture systems, rural connectivity and digital solutions produced in Brazil. Farmers, cooperatives and agricultural companies will be eligible, with the program designed to accelerate technology adoption, raise productivity and strengthen the domestic agricultural machinery industry. Source: Brasil 247

Climate Tech

Indigenous Brazil Nut Producers Receive Environmental-Service Payments - Indigenous communities in Rondônia have received an additional 20% payment for Brazil nuts produced during the 2025/26 harvest, recognising their role in conserving forests, biodiversity and local ecosystems. The agreement between Castanhas Ouro Verde and the Coopirb cooperative covers communities across roughly 236,000 hectares and forms part of an Embrapa-led project to improve quality, reduce losses and strengthen market access. About seven tonnes were sold under the model, with the premium managed collectively for community priorities. Source: Embrapa

Portuguese Group Selects Maringá for Brazil’s First Blue-Economy Cluster - Portuguese consultancy Vide de Grunwald has chosen Maringá, Paraná, to host its first blue-economy innovation cluster in Brazil. Developed with the State University of Maringá, the initiative will connect researchers, companies and investors around technologies for more sustainable water use, including aquaculture genetics, biotechnology, AI, veterinary science and waterTech. The cluster will begin by mapping local capabilities before establishing governance and a business-acceleration hub. Maringá was selected partly for the university’s expertise in tilapia genetics, with ambitions to become an international reference for blue-economy innovation. Source: Startups

WRI Calls for Single Traceability Framework for Soy and Beef - WRI Brasil has proposed harmonizing the country’s fragmented deforestation-monitoring and traceability systems into a single framework for soy and beef. The study reviewed 21 protocols, certifications and platforms, finding differences in cutoff dates, indirect-supplier controls and auditing standards that can confuse buyers and investors. Recommendations include integrating databases, simplifying audits, tracing soy back to the farm and accelerating monitoring of indirect cattle suppliers. The goal is to improve credibility, reduce trade risks and align Brazilian supply chains with international requirements. Source: Globo Rural

Brazil Sets National Rules for Native Vegetation Restoration - Brazil has introduced a national system to standardize how native vegetation recovery is monitored across all six biomes. Developed by Ibama, ICMBio, Embrapa and the Brazilian Forest Service, the model assesses ecological outcomes after a minimum four-year period using indicators such as ground cover, native plant density, species diversity and the presence of invasive species. The framework applies to 46 vegetation types and is intended to improve legal certainty, reduce inspection costs and support Brazil’s goal of restoring 12 million hectares by 2030. Source: Embrapa

Funding & M&A

Mantiqueira Returns to the Capital Markets With $30 Million Offering - Egg producer Mantiqueira has filed a public offering for approximately $30 million in agribusiness receivables certificates (CRAs), following a roughly $100 million issue last year. The single-tranche transaction will be backed by a financial CPR issued by the company and led by XP Investimentos. The unsecured deal comes as Mantiqueira accelerates expansion through new higher-value products, a low-carbon soy partnership with Bunge and its acquisition of Hickman’s Egg Ranch in the United States. JBS has shared control of the company since acquiring a 48.5% stake in 2025. Source: AgFeed

Symbiosis Seeks $100 Million to Scale Native-Forest Timber Model - Brazilian forestry company Symbiosis is seeking $100 million in debt and equity from international investors to expand its native-tree planting model in southern Bahia. Backed by Apple and financing from BNDES’ Climate Fund, the company plans to grow from 5,000 hectares to a further 10,000 hectares while combining certified timber, seedlings and carbon credits. A new sawmill will begin processing wood for decking, flooring and furniture, as Symbiosis aims to prove that restoring Atlantic Forest species can become a commercially viable alternative to harvesting natural forests. Source: The AgriBiz

Coamo Expands Through Acquisition of Belagrícola Assets - Coamo has acquired and leased agricultural units in five Paraná municipalities as Belagrícola restructures approximately $440 million in debt. The transaction extends a strategy that has already included the purchase of storage facilities and a seed-processing unit, with leased sites potentially converted into permanent acquisitions once documentation is regularized. Brazil’s largest agricultural cooperative is also investing about $13 million in new grain silos, largely financed by BNDES, to support storage expansion and its corn ethanol operations. Source: AgFeed

Macro & Markets

China Signals More Fertilizer Supply as Brazilian Imports Accelerate - China has indicated it is prepared to increase shipments of phosphate and nitrogen fertilizers to Brazil, responding to concerns over supply disruptions and rising geopolitical tensions. The signal comes as Brazilian ports handle a heavy fertilizer pipeline, with more than 6.1 million tonnes listed for unloading and Santos and Paranaguá accounting for the largest volumes. Brazil still imports more than 80% of the fertilizers it consumes, leaving farm costs and crop planning highly exposed to global trade, logistics and diplomatic relations. Source: Brasil 247 and AF News

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

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In the mid-2000s, a young, bright-eyed Idaho farmer, Scott Harker, arrived in western Bahia chasing what looked like one of the great agricultural bargains of the time: land for around $100 an acre.

Go back another four decades and the numbers were even harder to believe. New Yorker Ed Zanini acquired, and later lost, vast areas of Mato Grosso for little more than $1 an acre.

Of course, these were not really farms. Not yet.

They were enormous stretches of scrubland, often without roads, electricity, reliable communications or much of the infrastructure needed to grow and move a crop. The land price was low because almost everything else still had to be built.

I covered both stories during my years as a journalist with DTN. From a distance, they looked like stories about buying cheap land. Up close, they were stories about how expensive cheap land can become.

A story this week brought those old frontier tales back to mind. Rabobank expects Brazil’s soybean area to stop expanding in the 2026/27 season, raising the possibility that the long race for new farmland is finally coming to an end.

That would mark a significant change. Brazil’s agricultural growth has long depended on turning cheap, undeveloped land into productive farms. Yet the low purchase price often hid the real cost.

Poor soil, weak infrastructure, expensive logistics and years of investment meant these acres were never truly easy.

What may now be ending is not the hard work, but the old growth model.

Instead of finding the next area to open, the focus may begin to shift toward producing more from the land already cleared. That has been the reality in most developed agricultural markets for decades. Brazil may now be entering the same phase.

For many years, expansion offered farmers two sources of return: income from the crops they produced and appreciation in the land beneath them. As roads, storage and nearby towns developed, land that had once looked remote and marginal became increasingly valuable.

That made expansion attractive even when the early operating economics were difficult. A farm didn’t need to generate its full potential immediately if the surrounding region was developing, infrastructure was improving and land values were rising.

Over time, this became one of the engines behind Brazil’s emergence as an agricultural superpower. Soybeans moved from the South into the Cerrado, then farther north and west. Towns appeared where there had been little more than bushes, scrub and a dirt road.

If soybean acreage stops growing, Brazil could find more of its future production through better use of the land it already farms.

That could mean higher yields, but also recovering degraded pasture, improving soil, integrating crops and livestock, using water and inputs more carefully and investing in technology that produces more value from every acre.

The pressure is coming mainly from the economics of expansion. Low soybean prices, high interest rates and expensive inputs can make improving existing land more attractive than clearing new areas. Many of the remaining frontier regions are also farther from ports, more costly to prepare and harder to operate.

Each new acre is therefore becoming a more complicated bet. In the past, rising land values and wider margins could compensate for weak logistics, difficult soils or several years of disappointing returns. Today, there is less room to carry those costs while waiting for a farm to mature.

Farmers are likely to think more carefully about where the next real should go. Buying another property may still make sense, but soil correction, irrigation, crop-livestock integration, biological inputs, storage, automation and better use of data may offer a clearer return.

The frontier has not disappeared, but the threshold for expanding into it is rising.

Improving existing land is not a simple substitute for expansion. Recovering pasture, correcting soil, installing irrigation or upgrading storage all require capital, often before the benefits are visible. That is difficult when margins are tight and many farmers are focused on preserving cash.

There is also no universal formula. The right investment depends on the crop, soil, water, location and quality of management. Intensification can reduce pressure on native vegetation, but only if it genuinely raises productivity rather than simply pushing cattle or expansion farther into the frontier.

For Brazil, this would mark a deeper change than a pause in soybean acreage. The country’s future growth would depend less on finding the next cheap piece of land and more on understanding what the land already in use could become.

Scott Harker and Ed Zanini appeared to be buying extraordinarily cheap acres. In reality, the purchase price was probably the cheapest part of the deal. They were taking on the cost and risk of turning raw land into farms.

For much of the past 50 years, that was Brazil’s agricultural story: find the next frontier, endure the hardship and build something where almost nothing existed before.

The next chapter may be less Wild West, but no less important. It will be about turning farms into better farms.

The frontier is still there. It has simply moved inside the fence.

Thanks for reading.

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.

This week’s Brazil AgTech Report opens with cattle as collateral, with Cowmed completing the first B3-registered loan backed by tokenized cows. John Deere is bringing precision-ag electronics production to Brazil, Embrapa is building the country’s first international microorganism depository, and Ambev is testing AB InBev’s first protein beer.

In Climate Tech, Acelen is combining macaúba and AI to bring down the cost of sustainable aviation fuel. Nearly $6 billion in sustainable agriculture funds is looking for investable projects in Brazil, while B.Kemi is turning agricultural waste into biodegradable cosmetic ingredients.

Funding & M&A brings a busy mix of biotech, soil intelligence and hard assets. Terra Genomics raised $3.6 million, Stenon secured $21 million for expansion in Brazil, Zen-Noh bought 30% of Grupo Cereal, and major deals reshaped port and bioenergy assets.

In Macro & Markets, Brazil is closing in on the US as the world’s largest agricultural exporter, while weaker margins are cooling farmland prices and slowing soy expansion. Brazil has also banned force-fed foie gras, and coffee and beef were left outside the latest US tariff increase.

AgTech

• Cowmed Completes First B3-Registered Loan Backed by Tokenized Cattle

• John Deere to Produce Precision Agriculture Electronics in Brazil

• Embrapa to Host Brazil’s First Depository for Patentable Microorganisms

• Ambev Launches AB InBev’s First Protein Beer in Brazil

• Docket and B3 Partner to Speed Up CPR Registratio

Climate Tech

• Acelen Uses AI and Macaúba to Cut Sustainable Aviation Fuel Costs

• Nearly $6 Billion in Sustainable Agriculture Funds Puts Brazil in the Spotlight

• B.Kemi Turns Agricultural Waste into Award-Winning Cosmetic Ingredients

Funding & M&A

• Terra Genomics Raises $3.6 Million to Engineer Better Biological Inputs

• Stenon Raises $21 Million to Expand Real-Time Soil Analysis in Brazil

• Zen-Noh Acquires 30% of Grupo Cereal

• Simpar Sells Bahia Grain and Fertilizer Port to ICTSI for $360 Million

• Raízen Sells Caarapó Sugar and Ethanol Plant to Adecoagro for $152 Million

Macro & Markets

• Brazil Could Overtake the US as the World’s Largest Agricultural Exporter

• Brazil’s Soy Slowdown Reshapes the Farmland Market

• Brazil Bans Foie Gras Produced Through Force-Feeding

• US Exempts Brazilian Coffee and Beef from New 12.5% Tariff

AgTech

Cowmed Completes First B3-Registered Loan Backed by Tokenized Cattle - Cowmed and Target FIDC completed Brazil’s first formal credit transaction using tokenized dairy cows as collateral, moving about $20,000. Smart collars monitor each animal’s health, behaviour and location, converting the data into a unique digital identity registered with B3. The system allows lenders to value and track herds without physical inspections, reduces the risk of duplicate collateral and could unlock working capital for farmers. Cowmed currently monitors about 100,000 cows across more than 1,000 farms. Source: CNN Brasil

John Deere to Produce Precision Agriculture Electronics in Brazil - John Deere will invest about $15 million to expand its Canoas plant in Rio Grande do Sul and begin producing electronic components for agricultural and construction machinery in July 2027. The new line will manufacture intelligent control modules, high-precision StarFire GPS receivers, monitors and guidance systems for the Brazilian market. The move is intended to reduce dependence on imported components, deepen local technological capabilities and improve supply-chain agility. Source: AgFeed

Embrapa to Host Brazil’s First Depository for Patentable Microorganisms - Embrapa will establish Brazil’s first International Depositary Authority for microorganisms used in biotechnology patent applications. Backed by about $3 million from Finep and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the three-year project will allow companies and researchers to deposit biological samples domestically rather than sending them abroad. Once accredited under the Budapest Treaty, deposits made in Brazil will be recognized across 92 member countries, reducing costs and delays while strengthening protection for bioinputs, microbial pesticides and other biological technologies. Source: Forbes

Ambev Launches AB InBev’s First Protein Beer in Brazil - Ambev will launch Spaten Pro, AB InBev’s first protein beer worldwide, in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in late August. Developed over five years and more than 100 prototypes, the alcohol-free Munich Dunkel contains 10 grams of protein per 350 ml can. The product targets growing demand for high-protein, lower-calorie and alcohol-free beverages, with Brazil serving as the test market before any international rollout. Source: Forbes

Docket and B3 Partner to Speed Up CPR Registration - Docket partnered with Trillia, B3’s data and analytics arm, to create a platform that accelerates CPR issuance and registration while giving lenders better visibility into documentation, collateral and default risk. The companies say the solution can cut total processing time by 50%, with registration falling from 15–20 days to 3–4 days. It covers physical and financial CPRs and integrates with registries and certifiers including ONR, RDT, CDT, B3 and CERC. Source: AgFeed

Climate Tech

Acelen Uses AI and Macaúba to Cut Sustainable Aviation Fuel Costs - Acelen Renováveis is betting that Brazil’s native macaúba palm can make sustainable aviation fuel competitive with fossil kerosene. The company plans a $1.5 billion biorefinery in Bahia capable of producing 1 billion litres of SAF or renewable diesel annually. At its Agripark research centre, AI developed with a local university increased seed germination from 3% to 85%, while automation cut seed-processing time from 40 seconds to one. Acelen aims to plant 144,000 hectares, largely on degraded land, and says macaúba produces ten times more oil per hectare than soy. Source: The AgriBiz

Nearly $6 Billion in Sustainable Agriculture Funds Puts Brazil in the Spotlight - International funds have almost $6 billion available for regenerative agriculture, deforestation-free supply chains, land restoration and other sustainable farming projects, with Brazil emerging as a leading destination. Vehicles include the Green Climate Fund, AGRI3, &Green, Mirova and Brazil’s Growth Next-Generation Agriculture fund. The capital is available, but the bottleneck is investable projects: funders increasingly require reliable data, measurable outcomes, strong governance and standardized indicators before committing. Source: Forbes

B.Kemi Turns Agricultural Waste into Award-Winning Cosmetic Ingredients - Following last week’s story on Kapeh’s coffee-based cosmetics, Espírito Santo startup B.Kemi is also finding beauty in agricultural by-products. The company won the sustainability category at the Clean Beauty Awards with a fully biodegradable exfoliant made from rice husks and banana-derived microcellulose. Its broader aim is to replace imported and petroleum-based cosmetic ingredients with locally produced biomaterials made from Brazilian agricultural waste. Source: Tribuna Online

Funding & M&A

Terra Genomics Raises $3.6 Million to Engineer Better Biological Inputs - Terra Genomics raised $3.6 million in a seed round led by Pitanga Redux, with participation from Bold.t Capital, to build a research platform in Campinas. The startup combines metabolic engineering, synthetic biology and AI to genetically improve microorganisms already used in biological inputs, targeting traits such as nitrogen fixation, phosphorus solubilization and pest control. Terra says its design-build-test-learn process can cut development cycles from two to three years to as little as two months, while also creating stronger patent protection for new products. Source: AgFeed

Stenon Raises $21 Million to Expand Real-Time Soil Analysis in Brazil - German agtech Stenon raised about $21 million in a Series B led by Pymwymic, with backing from the DeepTech & Climate Fonds and existing investors. Brazil is a priority market for the expansion, with the company already operating in Goiás, Mato Grosso, Paraná and São Paulo. Its FarmLab platform combines sensors, AI and agronomic models to measure plant-available nitrogen and soil organic carbon directly in the field. Stenon says customers have reduced nitrogen fertilizer use by 20%–40% while increasing yields by 2%–8%. Source: Startups

Zen-Noh Acquires 30% of Grupo Cereal to Expand in Brazilian Agribusiness - Japanese agricultural cooperative federation Zen-Noh agreed to acquire a 30% stake in Grupo Cereal, a Goiás-based grain origination, storage, soy-processing and biodiesel company with annual revenue above $1 billion. The founding Barauna family will retain control and management. The partnership is expected to support new investment in storage, biodiesel capacity and geographic expansion, while helping connect Brazilian grain production more directly with Asian markets through Zen-Noh’s global network. Financial terms were not disclosed. Source: AgFeed

Simpar Sells Bahia Grain and Fertilizer Port to ICTSI for $360 Million - Simpar agreed to sell CS Porto Aratu to Philippine port operator ICTSI in a transaction valued at about $360 million, including roughly $200 million of net debt. The two terminals connect by rail to the Matopiba agricultural region and handle fertilizers, minerals, soy and corn, with combined annual capacity of up to 9.5 million tonnes following recent upgrades. The deal marks ICTSI’s entry into Brazil’s dry-bulk segment and gives the global operator a strategic export platform in the Northeast. Completion remains subject to regulatory approval. Source: AgFeed

Raízen Sells Caarapó Sugar and Ethanol Plant to Adecoagro for $152 Million - Raízen agreed to sell its Caarapó mill in Mato Grosso do Sul to Adecoagro for about $152 million, including associated sugarcane assets and supplier contracts. The plant produces sugar, hydrated and anhydrous ethanol, and renewable power, and sits near two other Adecoagro units, creating potential operating synergies. The divestment is part of Raízen’s effort to simplify its portfolio and improve returns while undergoing an out-of-court restructuring involving more than $13 billion of debt. The deal remains subject to regulatory approval. Source: Exame

Macro & Markets

Brazil Could Overtake the US as the World’s Largest Agricultural Exporter - Brazil is on track to surpass the US in agricultural export revenues this year, according to a Financial Times analysis. The gap narrowed to just 1.2% in 2025, when US exports reached $171 billion versus Brazil’s $169.2 billion, after standing at 137% in America’s favour two decades earlier. Rising Brazilian competitiveness, stronger Chinese demand and trade tensions affecting US farmers are accelerating the shift, although the US still leads global corn exports. Source: AgFeed

Brazil’s Soy Slowdown Reshapes the Farmland Market - After more than two decades of expansion, Brazil’s soybean area could stop growing in 2026/27 as weaker prices, tight margins, expensive credit and input uncertainty reduce incentives to open new land. Rabobank expects future growth to rely more on productivity and double cropping. The pressure is already reshaping farmland finance: land in Sorriso reportedly fell from about $40,000 per hectare three years ago to $20,000 today, while some producers are accepting sale-and-leaseback deals at even lower values to raise liquidity. Fiagros see the downturn as an opportunity to finance stronger operators and acquire discounted assets. Source: The AgriBiz and Exame

Brazil Bans Foie Gras Produced Through Force-Feeding - Brazil has prohibited the production and sale of foie gras and other products obtained through forced animal feeding, classifying the practice as animal cruelty. Violations can result in fines and prison sentences of three months to one year. Brazil becomes the second country, after India, to impose a nationwide ban, although similar production restrictions already exist in several other countries. The measure affects only a small domestic market, with three Brazilian producers reportedly using the technique. Source: g1

US Exempts Brazilian Coffee and Beef from New 12.5% Tariff - The US excluded Brazilian coffee and beef from a new 12.5% tariff introduced after a Section 301 investigation into Brazilian trade practices. The exemption list also covers planting seeds, selected fertilizer and pesticide inputs, animal-feed ingredients, leather and certain sugar products within existing quotas. The tariff takes effect on July 24, with exceptions for some goods already in transit. Source: Exame

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

This week’s Brazil AgTech news begins with a familiar pleasure: who doesn’t love the smell of freshly brewed coffee? Kapeh is taking that appeal beyond the cup, turning coffee into more than 200 cosmetics and preparing a new café-and-beauty franchise model. AgSafe is using AI to protect bees from crop spraying, Broto and iRancho are bringing offline cattle management to more ranchers, and agricultural robots could help fill the sector’s growing labour gap.

In Climate Tech, Copersucar tests ethanol as a marine fuel, while Energis8 plans a $1.3 billion sustainable aviation fuel plant in São Paulo. A new study warns that ending the Soy Moratorium could add 1.4 million hectares of Amazon deforestation by 2035, while AI Pathology is using mobile AI to help screen rural workers for skin cancer.

Funding & M&A brings a retreat and an expansion. BASF is closing its dedicated Brazilian venture capital operation, while Canopy enters agricultural software through the acquisition of Maxicon, creating a platform for further consolidation across the sector.

In Macro & Markets, foreign capital is moving deeper into Brazil’s fast-growing corn ethanol industry, and the country is set to retain its lead over the US in cotton exports. Brazil is also tightening rules on antimicrobial use in livestock as exporters target more demanding international markets.

AgTech

• Kapeh Brews Coffee into Cosmetics and Franchise Growth

• AgSafe Uses AI to Protect Bees from Crop Spraying

• Broto and iRancho Launch Offline Cattle Management Platform

• Farm Robots Could Ease Agriculture’s Labour Shortage

• Biome4All Launches AI Tool to Screen Soil Microbiology

• Precision Agriculture Could Add $2.2 Billion to Farm GDP

Climate Tech

• Copersucar Tests Ethanol as Marine Fuel in Santos

• Energis8 Plans $1.3 Billion SAF Plant in São Paulo

• Soy Moratorium’s End Could Add 1.4 Million Hectares of Deforestation

• Mobile AI Screens Rural Workers for Skin Cancer

Funding & M&A

• BASF Closes Local CVC Operation in Brazil

• Canopy Enters Ag Software with Maxicon Acquisition

Macro & Markets

• Foreign Capital Expands Brazil’s Corn Ethanol Industry

• Brazil Set to Retain Global Cotton Export Lead

• Brazil Tightens Rules on Antimicrobial Use in Livestock

AgTech

Kapeh Brews Coffee into Cosmetics and Franchise Growth - Coffee may be best known for waking people up, but Kapeh is giving it a second life in the bathroom cabinet. The Minas Gerais company has developed more than 200 coffee-based cosmetics, including exfoliants, body oils and lip treatments, and now sells through more than 300 multibrand outlets and five concept stores and kiosks. Around 5% of production is already exported. Kapeh is now preparing a franchise format combining cosmetics retail with cafés, turning one of Brazil’s best-known crops into a broader beauty and lifestyle brand. read more

AgSafe Uses AI to Protect Bees from Crop Spraying - Florianópolis-based AgSafe has developed an AI-powered platform that coordinates pesticide applications between farmers, spraying contractors and nearby beekeepers. The new platform, called Coex.AI, combines spraying schedules, apiary locations, weather conditions and product information to identify risks and issue advance alerts, allowing beekeepers to temporarily close hives while helping farmers reduce spray drift. Pilot projects in southern Brazil have reportedly improved soybean productivity and honey production, although the company has not disclosed precise gains. Founded in 2020 and currently self-funded, AgSafe is using Brazil as a testing ground before pursuing international expansion. read more

Broto and iRancho Launch Offline Cattle Management Platform - Banco do Brasil’s Broto ecosystem and iRancho have launched Broto Gestão Pecuária, a beef-cattle management system that tracks individual animals and centralizes farm data. Designed to work entirely offline, the platform aims to bring tools previously concentrated among larger operations to a broader range of ranchers. The companies say users can cut herd-management time by half and potentially double farm cash turnover through earlier slaughter, while improving traceability and data-based decision-making. read more

Farm Robots Could Ease Agriculture’s Labour Shortage - Agricultural robotics will become increasingly necessary as farmers age and younger workers avoid the sector, according to China Agricultural University researcher Wen-Hao Su. China is investing in research, specialist training and policies supporting robots for tasks including harvesting, crop monitoring and livestock management. Because equipment remains expensive, Su expects service models—where farmers pay for hours worked rather than buying machines—to accelerate adoption. In Brazil, the challenge will be developing robots that are powerful enough for large farms but light enough to avoid soil compaction, particularly in wetter production regions. read more

Biome4All Launches AI Tool to Screen Soil Microbiology - Biome4All has launched Biostart, an AI-based tool that uses physical and chemical soil data to predict microbiological risks linked to crop nutrition and pathogens. Trained on 14,000 soil samples collected over eight years, the system helps farmers identify priority areas before commissioning a full microbiological analysis, which can cost up to ten times more. After an initial free period, each assessment will cost about $8. The company expects the tool to expand access across farm sizes and increase its customer base from 6,000 to 9,000 producers. read more

Precision Agriculture Could Add $2.2 Billion to Farm GDP - Expanding precision agriculture could add more than $2.2 billion to Brazil’s agricultural GDP and generate over 400,000 jobs, according to Embrapa president Silvia Massruhá. She highlighted AI, connectivity and data analytics as central to improving productivity, strengthening sustainability and preparing farms for climate risks. However, limited digital access across rural Brazil remains a major barrier. The estimate was presented at precision and digital agriculture conferences in Porto Alegre, which drew 845 participants and more than 500 technical papers. read more

Climate Tech

Copersucar Tests Ethanol as Marine Fuel in Santos - Copersucar supplied 635,000 litres of sugarcane ethanol to a CMA CGM container ship in Brazil’s first transoceanic marine trial of the fuel. The ethanol will power part of the vessel’s journey to Sri Lanka and could reduce emissions by around 70% compared with conventional bunker fuel. Wider adoption still depends on new vessels, port infrastructure, international regulation and economics: ships require about 1.6 tonnes of ethanol to replace one tonne of fossil fuel. Copersucar believes scale and carbon credits, currently estimated near $100 each, could eventually narrow the cost gap. read more

Energis8 Plans $1.3 Billion SAF Plant in São Paulo - Brazilian company Energis8 plans to invest $1.3 billion in a sustainable aviation fuel plant in Paulínia, São Paulo, targeting annual production of around one billion litres from 2031. The facility would operate through a toll-processing model, converting ethanol supplied by customers into SAF for a per-litre fee. It would require about 1.7 billion litres of ethanol annually. The company expects the model to reduce exposure to volatile SAF prices and believes renewable aviation fuel costs will eventually approach parity with fossil-based jet fuel. read more

Soy Moratorium’s End Could Add 1.4 Million Hectares of Deforestation - Ending Brazil's Soy Moratorium could increase Amazon deforestation by 1.4 million hectares by 2035 and generate 745 million tonnes of carbon-equivalent emissions, according to a study published in Science. The researchers estimate the agreement prevented 1.8 million hectares of forest loss during its first decade and found no systematic evidence that participating farmers received lower soy prices. Aprosoja disputes the analysis, arguing that recent deforestation alerts have declined and that the moratorium restricted legal production rights. The debate now moves toward Brazil’s Supreme Court, which is reviewing state laws affecting the agreement. read more

Mobile AI Screens Rural Workers for Skin Cancer - AI Pathology’s Nevo tool uses smartphone photos to assess suspicious skin lesions and identify patients who need specialist care. In a seven-month project with Senar Goiás, technicians screened 2,058 rural workers from small and medium-sized farms, leading to 75 confirmed cases that received free treatment. The company says the system identified all urgent lesions requiring referral and achieves up to 93% accuracy in risk screening, although it does not replace medical diagnosis. AI Pathology now plans to expand the program into Brazil’s South, Center-West and Northeast. read more

Funding & M&A

BASF Closes Local CVC Operation in Brazil - BASF Venture Capital has reorganized its $290 million global fund around teams in Germany, China and the US East Coast, ending its dedicated local operation in Brazil. Its South American portfolio will now be managed from Germany, although BASF says it remains an investor in existing companies and funds. Brazilian investments include Traive, Grão Direto and SP Ventures’ AgVentures II. The move reflects a broader retrenchment by corporate venture arms in the region, even as BASF continues investing globally from seed through Series B in sustainability, biotechnology and AI. read more

Canopy Enters Ag Software with Maxicon Acquisition - Brazilian software consolidator Canopy has acquired Maxicon, a Paraná-based platform serving grain originators and logistics operators. Maxicon has more than 7,000 users, processes around 35 million tonnes of grain annually and supports roughly $24 billion in transactions. The acquisition is Canopy’s third overall and its first in agriculture, following a $100 million fundraising to build software platforms through M&A. Canopy plans to use Maxicon as a base for further consolidation across farming, livestock, logistics and agro-industrial software, while Maxicon’s founders remain in the business. read more

Macro & Markets

Foreign Capital Expands Brazil’s Corn Ethanol Industry - Foreign investors are moving into Brazil’s fast-growing corn ethanol sector, attracted by abundant second-crop corn, year-round processing and multiple revenue streams from ethanol, DDGS, corn oil, electricity and biomethane. Paraguay’s Inpasa, US-backed FS and Cargill, and the UAE’s Mubadala-backed Atvos have already committed capital, while BP is assessing potential projects linked to its sugarcane assets. Brazilian corn ethanol output has risen to nearly 10 billion litres from 2.65 billion at the start of the decade. Chinese companies remain largely on the sidelines, despite opportunities in equipment, financing, joint ventures and integrated biorefineries. read more

Brazil Set to Retain Global Cotton Export Lead - Brazil is expected to remain the world’s largest cotton exporter in 2026/27, with shipments projected at 3.2 million tonnes, according to the USDA. Production was revised up to 3.9 million tonnes, still below the record 4.08 million tonnes expected for 2025/26, while ending stocks were cut to 742,000 tonnes as more fibre heads overseas. The US is forecast to produce 3 million tonnes and export 2.7 million tonnes. Global consumption is expected to remain above production, keeping the market relatively tight. read more

Brazil Tightens Rules on Antimicrobial Use in Livestock - Brazil has banned five antimicrobials from being manufactured, imported, sold or used as growth promoters in animal feed, aligning its livestock regulations more closely with international efforts to combat antimicrobial resistance. The new rules cover avoparcin, bacitracin, zinc bacitracin, bacitracin methylene disalicylate and virginiamycin, with existing registrations to be cancelled after a transition period. The measure could help Brazilian meat exporters preserve access to higher-value markets such as the EU, UK and Japan, where food safety and responsible antimicrobial use are becoming increasingly important trade requirements. read more

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

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It’s not just because I’ve been watching a Messi masterclass over the past few weeks that I came up with this week’s headline. “Messy job” is a term I heard recently, and it seems to describe farming perfectly.

A messy job isn’t necessarily dirty. It’s a job that is difficult to describe and almost impossible to predict. On any given day, it might involve fifty different tasks, dozens of decisions and a plan that rarely survives until lunch.

AI performs best when a job follows a predictable pattern with clearly defined steps. The easier it is to describe exactly what someone does, the easier it is to teach a machine to do it. Messy jobs are different. They are full of interruptions, exceptions and unexpected trade-offs, making them much harder to automate.

That describes a farmer’s day remarkably well, because no two are ever quite the same.

There is, of course, plenty of literal mess in farming: mud, manure, dust, grease and machinery that normally chooses the least convenient moment to stop working. But the real mess comes from trying to manage biology, weather, people, equipment, markets and money—often at the same time.

Ask someone outside agriculture what a farmer does and the answer sounds quite simple. A farmer grows soybeans, raises cattle or produces milk. That is true in roughly the same way as saying Messi scores goals. It leaves out most of what makes the job hard.

A farmer may begin the morning planning to inspect a field. Before getting there, a water trough has stopped working. He notices one cow in heat and another that looks lame. On a crop farm, rain suddenly appears in the forecast, a grain truck is stuck on the road into the farm and the bank wants one more document before releasing the credit line.

By mid-morning, the original plan has disappeared. Each problem may be relatively simple on its own, but dealing with all of them creates a job that is almost impossible to describe and even harder to predict.

None appeared on yesterday’s to-do list, yet each one changes what happens next. Every farmer reading this has lived some version of that morning. In fact, it is probably what most farmers would describe as a fairly normal day.

Farming is not really one job. It is hundreds of small tasks wrapped around dozens of decisions. Technology has been replacing those tasks for more than a century. Tractors replaced horses. Combines replaced teams of people harvesting crops. Milking machines removed one of the most repetitive jobs on the farm.

Machines took far more jobs away from farming than AI ever will. AI won’t replace the farmer—it will replace parts of the farmer’s job.

As machines took over more of the physical work, the farmer’s role shifted towards managing equipment, people, capital and risk. Farming needed less muscle, but more judgment. And this is exactly where AI can help most.

AI can analyse a crop, predict disease and compare marketing options. But its real value is helping the farmer make sense of all those signals together.

The difficult part of farming has never been finding the answer. It is deciding what to do when weather, biology, machinery, markets and money are all pointing in different directions.

The best agronomic decision may still be too expensive. The ideal planting date may arrive while the planter is being repaired. The most profitable decision may simply involve more risk than the business can absorb.

AI can make those trade-offs clearer, but it cannot remove them. The farmer still has to decide which risk to take and live with the consequences.

Many sectors of the economy are worried that AI will take all the jobs. Agriculture is increasingly asking where the next generation of workers will come from. Across much of the world, there simply aren’t enough people willing to do farm work. Skilled machinery operators are difficult to find, while rural populations are ageing fast.

If AI can remove some of the repetitive, manual and messy parts of farming, the remaining work becomes more valuable. Workers become more productive. Farm managers spend less time gathering information and more time acting on it. Skilled employees become more valuable, not less.

That may also change how the next generation sees farming.

For many, farming has been more of a vocation than a job. Long hours, physical labour and constant firefighting are not especially attractive, even when the family farm comes with a four-wheeler.

But a farming business built around robotics, automation and AI looks very different. Not just because young people naturally like technology, but because the technology allows them to spend more time solving problems than repeating tasks.

Farming will always be a messy job.

The weather will change. Markets will surprise us. Machines will break down at exactly the wrong moment. And biology will continue to ignore our carefully prepared plans.

AI won’t remove that mess. It will simply make farmers better equipped to deal with it.

The future of farming isn’t about replacing farmers. It’s about making farming a job more people want to do.

Thanks for reading.

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.

This week’s Brazil AgTech Report looks at how AI and digital tools are moving into practical operations. Embrapa has developed a molecular fingerprint to authenticate meat, Belo Monte will use AI to monitor fish in the Xingu river and Oracle is helping AI startups reach large corporate clients.

Climate Tech brings a more circular and biological angle. Better Beef is turning sweet potatoes into ethanol and cattle feed, Biotrop is using AI to accelerate biological discovery, Petrovina has launched a carbon-neutral soybean seed, and BrasilAgro is betting on irrigation to raise farmland value.

In Funding & M&A news, InLida raised $200,000 to expand its digital cattle management platform, Limber and Infogen are combining their AgTech businesses, Grupo Aroeira secured financing for a new cereals ethanol plant and Inpasa is seeking $200 million for expansion.

In Macro & Markets, Stine is targeting second place in Brazil’s soybean seed market, ETG plans its first fertilizer plant in the country, and the government is considering cheaper rural credit for farmers who buy crop insurance.

AgTech

• Embrapa Creates Molecular Fingerprint for Meat

• Belo Monte to Use AI for Fish Monitoring

• Oracle Launches AI Startup Growth Program

Climate Tech

• Better Beef Turns Sweet Potatoes into Feed and Fuel

• Biotrop Uses AI to Accelerate Biological Discovery

• Petrovina Launches Carbon-Neutral Soybean Seed

• BrasilAgro Bets on Irrigation to Raise Land Value

Funding & M&A

• InLida Raises $200,000 to Expand Digital Cattle Platform

• Limber and Infogen Merge to Build Ag Platform

• Grupo Aroeira Secures Financing for Ethanol Plant

• Inpasa Seeks $200 Million for Expansion

Macro & Markets

• Stine Targets Second Place in Soybean Seeds

• ETG to Build Fertilizer Plant in Tocantins

• Credit Discount Could Boost Rural Insurance

AgTech

Embrapa Develops 20-Minute Molecular “Fingerprint” to Authenticate Meat - Embrapa and university researchers have developed a mass-spectrometry method that identifies whether meat comes from cattle, pigs, chickens or tilapia in about 20 minutes. The protein-based molecular fingerprint can also distinguish Nelore from Angus beef and works after freezing or frying. The expandable database could support premium-meat certification, biological traceability, sanitary inspections and fraud detection, offering regulators and exporters a faster alternative to genetic testing. read more

Belo Monte to Use AI for Real-Time Fish Monitoring in the Xingu River - Hydroelectric plant, Belo Monte, will deploy an AI-powered computer vision system from April 2027 to identify and count fish passing through its fish transposition system. Developed with Instituto Atlântico, the model is expected to classify migratory and Amazonian species with more than 90% accuracy, replacing a labor-intensive process currently handled frame by frame by a six-person team. The roughly $1.4 million project could eventually be adapted for other Brazilian dams, improving environmental reporting and monitoring of hydroelectric impacts on aquatic biodiversity. read more

Oracle Launches Program to Help AI Startups Reach Corporate Clients - Oracle has launched the Startup Growth Engine in Latin America to help scaling B2B AI startups overcome one of their biggest barriers: access to large corporate customers. The program offers technical and business mentoring, up to $60,000 in Oracle Cloud credits, visibility at company events and potential access to Oracle’s marketplace and customer ecosystem. Startups must already have active clients and demonstrated growth potential, with benefits unlocked as their relationship with Oracle develops. read more

Climate Tech

Better Beef Turns Sweet Potatoes into Feed and Fuel - The Better Beef feedlot is developing a circular production model that converts off-spec sweet potatoes into ethanol, high-protein cattle feed and, eventually, biomethane for its own fleet and industrial operations. The project is expected to process about 36,000 tons of sweet potatoes annually, producing 15 million liters of alcohol and around 7,000 tons of cattle feed. The company says the initiative reduces waste, creates a new market for regional farmers and strengthens cost control across its vertically integrated beef business. read more

Biotrop Uses AI to Accelerate Biological Discovery - Brazilian biotech company, Biotrop, has integrated a proprietary AI system into its soil metagenomics platform, drawing on years of tropical soil data to identify microbial patterns, generate hypotheses and accelerate the development of new biological products. The company is also applying AI across technical, regulatory, legal and administrative processes. Biotrop says one internal tool saved 350 employee hours in a month and delivered a return 15 times its cost, freeing specialists to focus on research, innovation and higher-value decisions. read more

Petrovina Launches Carbon-Neutral Soybean Seed - Mato Grosso seed company Petrovina has launched what it says is Brazil’s first carbon-neutral soybean seed, following three years of investment in sustainability practices, emissions measurement and carbon offsetting. The product will be sold through its premium Prime and Prime Tech lines without a price premium, while the company targets 20%–25% of total sales within three years. Petrovina sold 1.3 million bags last season and says its earlier RTRS certification investments paid back in three years through annual credit revenues of roughly $180,000–$200,000. read more

BrasilAgro Bets on Irrigation to Raise Land Value - BrasilAgro is investing in irrigation at its 11,700-hectare Arrojadinho farm in Bahia to test whether higher productivity can unlock a new model for land appreciation. The company plans to irrigate 4,200 hectares, with 2,900 hectares already operating and completion expected in 2027. Management estimates the investment at about $5,000 per hectare and sees potential to raise land values from roughly 200 to as much as 1,000 bags of soybeans per hectare. By enabling two annual crops, including a soybean-cotton rotation, the project could achieve payback in five to six years. read more

Funding & M&A

InLida Raises $200,000 to Expand Digital Cattle Platform - Piracicaba-based InLida has raised more than $200,000 since its founding, with backing from cattle producers Bernhard Kiep and Marcos Ermírio de Moraes. The startup’s herd-management platform has registered more than 30,000 farms, 300,000 animals and 90,000 inseminations. Its new subscription-based version targets small and midsized cattle producers, with plans starting at about $6 per month and offline field data capture. Around 10% of registered farms have migrated to the upgraded platform, which adds reproductive indicators, calving forecasts and herd analytics. read more

Limber and Infogen Merge to Build Larger Ag Platform - Limber Software has merged with Santa Catarina-based Infogen Informática, creating one of Brazil’s largest technology verticals focused on agribusiness. Operating as Infogen by Limber, the combined business serves more than 400 clients and 12,000 active users across companies generating around $25 billion in annual revenue. Infogen founder Ernani Zottis will continue leading the ag division, which includes AI-enabled tools for grain storage, livestock monitoring, logistics, farm relationships and industrial operations. read more

Grupo Aroeira Secures Financing for Cereals Ethanol Plant - Grupo Aroeira will build a cereals ethanol plant in Tupaciguara after securing $124 million in BNDES financing. Operated by Biomil Etanol, the unit is expected to begin production in 2028 and process 330,000 tons of corn and sorghum annually, producing 146 million liters of ethanol and around 92,000 tons of DDGS for animal feed. The project expands Aroeira’s existing sugarcane, ethanol, sugar and energy complex in the Triângulo Mineiro. read more

Inpasa Seeks $200 Million for Expansion - Inpasa is seeking about $200 million through debentures to finance expansion and improve its capital structure as it pushes deeper into Brazil’s corn ethanol market. The company points to its $320 million Sinop expansion, which doubled the plant’s capacity, as backing for the raise. New units in Rio Verde and Rondonópolis are also under development and are expected to lift Inpasa’s total production capacity by 50% to 8.6 billion liters annually by 2027. read more

Macro & Markets

Stine Targets Second Place in Brazil’s Soybean Seed Market - US seed company Stine is expanding into southern Brazil as it seeks to become the country’s second-largest soybean seed brand by 2030. After separating its Brazilian operation from the rest of Latin America, the company is adding commercial partners and now works with more than 40 multipliers nationwide, including 14 in the South. Stine says its market share has risen from near zero three years ago to about 6% for the 2026/27 season. read more

ETG to Build Fertilizer Plant in Tocantins - Global fertilizer company ETG will install its first Brazilian industrial plant at VLI’s logistics complex in Palmeirante, Tocantins. The $5 million unit will have annual production capacity of 200,000 tons and storage for 45,000 tons, with operations expected to begin in February 2027. Imported inputs will arrive through the Port of Itaqui and travel by rail to Tocantins, strengthening the fertilizer corridor serving Matopiba. read more

Credit Discount Could Boost Rural Insurance - Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry plans to propose lower rural credit rates for producers who buy crop insurance, with a discount of up to one percentage point on controlled credit lines under the 2026/27 Plano Safra. The goal is to expand protection ahead of an expected El Niño period, but the initiative faces budget constraints after rural insurance subsidies were cut from an initial roughly $200 million to just over $100 million. The ministry is also considering linking insurance coverage to access to subsidized credit, although that would require legal changes. read more

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

This week’s Brazil AgTech Report looks at how Amazon researchers are using genomics to accelerate açaí breeding, while TIM pushes its rural connectivity strategy toward ag data intelligence. Carbon Exchange and GreenBug are combining sensors and bioacoustics for real-time fire detection, and Brazil’s House approved longer protection for plant cultivars.

In Climate Tech, Uberaba is set to receive a new biomethane plant that will turn sugarcane residues into renewable gas. Brazil also regulated payments for environmental services, but limited what farmers can be paid for under the federal program. Volvo and Potencial Agro are expanding B100 biodiesel trucking, while China’s new soy sustainability guide accepts Brazilian environmental law as the core standard.

In Funding & M&A, Suzano closed its $1.3 billion Kimberly-Clark tissue JV acquisition, giving it control of a new consumer-facing platform. DeepAgro raised $3 million to expand AI-powered selective spraying in Brazil, Grupo Zanchetta acquired Ceratti, and Biotrop reached $1.3 million in first-year US sales.

In Macro & Markets, Goiás announced a $60 million applied AI hub, reinforcing the race to build local AI infrastructure. Brazilian meatpackers are cutting slaughter as China’s beef quota nears its limit, most Latin American VCs now use AI to analyze investments, and Sicredi plans $14.4 billion in rural credit for the 2026/27 crop season.

AgTech

• Amazon Researchers Sequence Açaí Genome

• TIM Shifts From 4G Coverage to Ag Data Intelligence

• Carbon Exchange and GreenBug Target Real-Time Fire Detection

• Brazilian House Approves Longer Protection for Plant Cultivars

Climate Tech

• Uberaba Biomethane Plant to Turn Sugarcane Waste Into Renewable Gas

• Brazil Limits Agro Eligibility in Environmental Services Payments

• Volvo and Potencial Agro Expand Biodiesel Truck Fleet

• China Accepts Brazilian Environmental Law as Soy Sustainability Standard

Funding & M&A

• Suzano Closes $1.3 Billion Kimberly-Clark Tissue JV Acquisition

• DeepAgro Raises $3 Million to Expand Selective Spraying in Brazil

• Grupo Zanchetta Acquires Ceratti to Expand Processed Meat Portfolio

• Biotrop Reaches $1.3 Million in First-Year US Sales

Macro & Markets

• Goiás to Invest $60 Million in Applied AI Hub

• Brazilian Meatpackers Cut Slaughter as China Beef Quota Nears Limit

• Most Latin American VCs Now Use AI to Analyze Investments

• Sicredi Plans $14.4 Billion in Rural Credit for 2026/27 Crop Season

AgTech

Amazon Researchers Sequence Açaí Genome - Researchers from UFPA and Embrapa Amazônia Oriental sequenced the açaí genome for the first time, creating a tool to accelerate genetic improvement of one of Brazil’s most important bioeconomy crops. The work can help identify genes linked to productivity, anthocyanin content, fruit color and disease resistance, reducing the time needed to select desirable traits. The research may also support new biotech routes for producing natural colorants, antioxidants and other molecules of interest for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries, while advancing Embrapa’s long-running effort to adapt açaí for cultivation on non-flooded land. Read more

TIM Shifts From 4G Coverage to Ag Data Intelligence - TIM Brasil is moving into the next phase of its agribusiness strategy after connecting 27.3 million hectares with rural 4G and more than 54 million hectares with NB-IoT. The operator says growth will now come less from coverage expansion and more from turning farm data into services for AI, cloud computing, automation and operational management. Its B2B portfolio totals about $200 million in contracts, with clients including BP Bioenergy, SLC Agrícola, Jalles, Citrosuco, Amaggi and Adecoagro. The recent acquisition of V8.Tech strengthens its push into data integration, analytics and AI. Read more

Carbon Exchange and GreenBug Target Real-Time Fire Detection - Carbon Exchange and GreenBug are developing hardware to monitor fires in real time by combining environmental sensors with bioacoustic detection. Carbon Exchange’s device tracks variables such as pressure, humidity, temperature and smoke, while GreenBug adds sound monitoring capable of identifying human presence, vehicles, chainsaws, gunshots and other activity even in areas without internet or power. Field tests are planned for September, with the product expected to be available in 2027. Carbon Exchange is also raising at least $1 million to help build a factory in Belém. Read more

Brazilian House Approves Longer Protection for Plant Cultivars - Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies approved a bill extending cultivar protection from 15 to 25 years for grapevines, fruit trees, forest trees, ornamental plants, rootstocks and sugarcane, while keeping the 15-year term for annual crops such as soy, corn, beans and rice. The proposal aims to align Brazil more closely with international plant variety protection standards and improve legal certainty for long-cycle breeding investments. Supporters say the change is especially relevant for planted forests and sugarcane, where new varieties can take many years to develop and commercialize. The bill now returns to the Senate. Read more

Climate Tech

Uberaba Biomethane Plant to Turn Sugarcane Waste Into Renewable Gas - Gasmig and Geomit signed a contract to build a biomethane plant in Uberaba that will produce 50,000 cubic meters per day of renewable fuel from sugarcane residues supplied by Companhia Mineira de Açúcar e Álcool. The project is expected to begin commercial operations in May 2028 and will supply industries and fleets in Uberaba, Uberlândia, Indianópolis and Araxá. Gasmig plans to invest about $200 million in 400 kilometers of new gas pipelines, helping replace fossil fuels such as diesel, fuel oil and LPG across the Triângulo Mineiro. Read more

Brazil Limits Agro Eligibility in Environmental Services Payments - Brazil regulated its National Policy for Payments for Environmental Services five years after the law was approved, creating clearer rules for contracts, payers, beneficiaries and eligible activities. The decree allows payments for conservation, restoration, agroforestry, sustainable management, water protection and recycling, and recognizes technologies such as remote sensing for MRV. But the federal program will not pay farmers for preserving areas already protected under the Forest Code, such as Legal Reserves and APPs, limiting payments to legally deforestable native vegetation kept standing. The market is still waiting for a national PSA registry and tax incentives. Read more

Volvo and Potencial Agro Expand Biodiesel Truck Fleet - Volvo delivered five more FH B100 Flex trucks to Potencial Agro, bringing the Paraná-based company’s fleet of 100% biodiesel-capable vehicles to 43 units. Potencial plans to invest about $1.2 billion by 2030 in biodiesel, corn ethanol and biomethane, targeting 1.7 billion liters of biodiesel, 500 million liters of corn ethanol, 1 billion liters of ethanol and 9 million cubic meters of biogas. Volvo says it has sold 300 FH B100 trucks since 2024 and sees faster adoption depending on ANP rules for biodiesel distribution and incentives for B100 freight decarbonization. Read more

China Accepts Brazilian Environmental Law as Soy Sustainability Standard - China’s food import chamber released a sustainable soy supply-chain guide for Brazil that recognizes Brazilian environmental law as the main benchmark for assessing legality and sustainability. Earlier drafts had proposed stricter rules, including zero-deforestation criteria and references to the Soy Moratorium, but those were removed after pressure from Brazilian producer groups, including Aprosoja MT. The guide now cites instruments such as the CAR and deforestation authorizations, and highlights Aprosoja MT’s Soja Legal program as a case study. Aprosoja MT plans to sign an agreement in Beijing to operationalize a traceability program. Read more

Funding & M&A

Suzano Closes $1.3 Billion Kimberly-Clark Tissue JV Acquisition - Suzano completed the acquisition of 51% of FampPro Tissue Holdings from Kimberly-Clark for $1.3 billion, giving the pulp and paper company control of the joint venture, which will now be renamed Arbex. The initial capital structure includes about $1 billion in net debt linked to the transaction financing. Suzano and Kimberly-Clark also signed governance, management and operating agreements, along with transition-service and licensing contracts to support continuity after closing. The deal had been announced in June 2025 and updated in May 2026. Read more

DeepAgro Raises $3 Million to Expand Selective Spraying in Brazil - Argentina’s DeepAgro is raising $3 million in a pre-Series A round led by a large Brazilian fund to scale its AI-powered selective spraying technology in Brazil. The startup validated its SprAI system with Amaggi, where tests across more than 22,000 hectares of soy and cotton delivered an average 71% reduction in herbicide use. DeepAgro is also testing with Adecoagro in sugarcane, negotiating a machinery partnership and targeting the BR-163 corridor in Mato Grosso as a key growth region. The company says its system can be adapted to sprayers of any brand or year. Read more

Grupo Zanchetta Acquires Ceratti to Expand Processed Meat Portfolio - Grupo Zanchetta acquired Ceratti, the 90-year-old cold cuts and processed meats company previously controlled by Hormel Foods since 2017. The deal gives Zanchetta a stronger position in pork-based processed products and expands its consumer-facing portfolio beyond its existing brands Alliz, Mondelli and Frangoeste. Ceratti will keep its industrial unit in Vinhedo, São Paulo, and both companies will continue operating independently until the transaction is approved by Cade. The acquisition value was not disclosed. Read more

Biotrop Reaches $1.3 Million in First-Year US Sales - Biotrop reached $1.3 million in US sales during its first year in the market, as the Brazilian biologicals company expands into the world’s largest agricultural inputs market. The Biofirst-owned company is offering biofungicides, bionematicides and soil conditioners for crops including soy, corn, wheat, cotton and peanuts. Biotrop has opened a research unit in Gainesville with the University of Florida, is building a local field team and has begun registering 14 biological products in the US. In 2025, the company ran 185 field trials in North America and is carrying out more than 170 experiments this year. Read more

Macro & Markets

Goiás to Invest $60 Million in Applied AI Hub - Goiás will invest about $60 million over five years to create an AI and Innovation District in Goiânia and expand the Federal University of Goiás’ AI Excellence Center. The district will cover 91 hectares and aims to attract companies, research centers and startups through incentives, including lower ISS taxes and direct subsidies. Of the total, about $16 million will go to the CEIA, including around $8 million for Nvidia GPUs. The strategy focuses on applied AI, model adaptation, SLMs, autonomous mobility, public-sector solutions and startup acceleration. Read more

Brazilian Meatpackers Cut Slaughter as China Beef Quota Nears Limit - Brazilian meatpackers are reducing slaughter and granting collective vacations as China’s annual tariff-rate quota for Brazilian beef approaches its 1.106 million-ton limit. Companies including Frigol, Better Beef, Iguatemi Beef and Plena Alimentos are suspending or cutting production, with Chinese buyers expected to return only in October for shipments that would count toward the 2027 quota. Brazil had filled 65.4% of the quota by late June, and volumes above the limit face a sharply higher tariff. The slowdown highlights the sector’s exposure to China despite efforts to redirect supply to the US, Middle East, UK and domestic market. Read more

Most Latin American VCs Now Use AI to Analyze Investments - More than 90% of Latin American venture capital firms now use AI to analyze deals, according to Hi Ventures’ State of AI Latin America 2026 report, up from 45% two years ago. The survey of 54 managers found AI is being used for market research, competitive intelligence, portfolio monitoring, financial modeling, LP communications, contract review and compliance. Startups with AI at the core are also becoming a priority, with 61% of funds saying more than 60% of their investments over the past year had AI at the center. The report also highlights rapid adoption of AI agents across portfolios. Read more

Sicredi Plans $14.4 Billion in Rural Credit for 2026/27 Crop Season - Sicredi plans to provide $14.4 billion in rural credit during the 2026/27 crop season, up 4.4% from the previous cycle, across about 340,000 operations. The cooperative expects to allocate $5.5 billion to working capital, $3.1 billion to investment, $400 million to commercialization and industrialization, $3.6 billion through CPRs and $1.8 billion through dollar-linked credit lines. Sicredi is also watching rising rural delinquency and says growth will depend on portfolio quality, with more cautious lending and greater use of insurance, consórcios and diversified funding. Read more

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

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For the past 20 years, software has been eating the world, to borrow Marc Andreessen’s famous line. For venture capital, this was close to the perfect model. Code was easy to distribute, margins were high, and the best software companies could grow exponentially without factories, inventory, servicing networks or working capital.

Hardware sat on the other side of the fence. It was slow, capital intensive, hard to iterate and usually needed manufacturing, logistics, maintenance, leasing or equipment finance. That made it a difficult fit for classic venture capital, not only in agriculture, but across most sectors.

Software transformed banking, media, advertising, retail and logistics because those industries already generated digital data. A payment, ad click, loan application or e-commerce purchase already lives inside a digital system. The data was already there. Software simply organized it, analyzed it and monetized it.

Farming was a different animal altogether. Much of the information is still analog, local and often sitting inside the farmer’s head. To make software useful, the farmer had to input data, learn another system, interpret the output and then connect it back to real decisions in the field.

A truly digital farm also required hardware. Soil sensors, cameras, drones, weather stations, storage and connectivity all had to be paid for before the software could really start working. Dashboards then had to turn that data into something useful. Even then, the payback was not always obvious.

In Brazilian agriculture, where margins are thin, interest rates are high, weather risk is constant and cash flow is seasonal, that was always a tough sell.

This is where AI comes in, increasing the value of tractors, robots and sensors by allowing them to generate intelligence while they work. Farm machinery was originally designed to replace muscle. Software tried to make those machines more efficient and connected. AI may finally make them more intelligent and profitable.

A machine that only performs one physical task has one main source of return. A machine that performs the task and produces useful intelligence at the same time can support several parts of the farm business. It can improve the operation, reduce risk, document what happened and create data that has value beyond the field.

The milking robot on my family farm is a good example. The main reason to buy it was labor shortage, as fewer people want to do repetitive dairy work anymore. But the robot does more than milk. It analyses milk quality, detects early signs of mastitis, tracks animal behavior and productivity and helps the farmer spot health issues well before they become visible.

The same logic applies in the field. A combine has traditionally been judged by its size and harvest speed, but modern machines also collect GPS, yield, moisture and performance data as they move. With AI, that information can become valuable beyond the harvest itself, helping identify field variability, detect operational problems, estimate crop quality, update inventories, improve logistics and provide evidence for lenders, insurers or buyers.

The pattern also shows up in smaller, less obvious hardware. Belgian startup SoundTalks uses AI-enabled microphones in pig barns to monitor cough patterns and other respiratory signals, detecting disease and respiratory risk weeks before symptoms are visible to the farmer.

That is an important difference from the last software wave. Traditional software worked best with structured data: numbers in rows, fields in forms and inputs that were already cleaned and organized. AI can work with messier signals: sound, images, movement, heat, vibration, color, behavior and patterns that may not be obvious to the human eye or ear. Farms are full of signals long before they become data.

Once those signals become useful intelligence, the value of the hardware changes. A microphone, camera or machine is no longer just a tool doing one job. It becomes a way to turn the physical world into decisions, documentation and risk reduction.

The investment case for venture capital may start to change as a result. Hardware is still hard because it needs manufacturing, inventory, servicing, distribution and financing. When one physical asset can create value across several workflows and several beneficiaries, the calculation looks different. The farmer gets a shorter payback period. The startup can build more than one revenue stream, and the hardware itself provides a natural competitive moat.

The broader return of interest in deep tech also matters. Investors are starting to look again at companies that combine software with complex physical systems, from robotics and industrial automation to aerospace and farm hardware. The record-breaking SpaceX IPO has pushed deep tech back into the center of the venture conversation. Farming has always been physical, and AI may finally make that physical layer more valuable.

AgTech hardware will still be difficult to build and finance, but a machine that does the job while creating useful intelligence can serve more parts of the value chain, support more business models and pay back faster. For farmers, startups and investors, these machines are still heavy, but the extra returns can help carry the load.

Thanks for reading.

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.

This week’s Brazil AgTech Report looks at grain markets moving after hours, as Grão Direto and ADM test 24-hour trading. Brazil’s new regional radar shows the country dominates Latin American agtech, Pyka turns Brazil into its main market for autonomous agricultural aircraft, and the AI race highlights agriculture’s data gap.

In Climate Tech, Viter expands from agricultural limestone into foliar nutrition and biologicals, while Danone links dairy productivity to ESG, protein growth and regenerative agriculture. Biotrop pushes Brazilian biologicals into the U.S. market, Petrobras advances renewable fuels, Komet studies water droplets to improve irrigation efficiency, and biomass cogeneration faces Brazil’s first curtailment test.

Funding & M&A brings another active week for farmland, credit and corporate deleveraging. SLC Agrícola moves to secure Radar farmland in Mato Grosso, JiveMauá raises a new Fiagro for ag credit, Cosan weighs further asset sales, and rural insurance budgets tighten again despite the need for broader climate risk protection.

In Macro & Markets, Mato Grosso gains new rail capacity to move more grain toward Santos, Brazil’s soy area expansion slows to its weakest pace in 20 years, and the country’s beef export quota to China moves close to saturation.

AgTech

• Grão Direto opens 24-hour grain trading with ADM pilot

• Brazil leads Latin America with 78% of regional agtech startups

• Pyka makes Brazil its main market for autonomous agricultural aircraft

• AI adoption in agriculture exposes the field data gap

Climate Tech

• Viter expands from agricultural limestone into foliar nutrition and biologicals

• Danone ties dairy to ESG, protein growth and regenerative agriculture

• Biotrop targets U.S. growth in biological inputs from Brazilian base

• Brazil’s first biomass curtailment raises concerns for sugarcane cogeneration mills

• Petrobras approves $1.2 billion renewable aviation fuel and diesel plant

• Komet opens irrigation efficiency lab to reduce water losses in Brazil

Funding & M&A

• Rural insurance budget cut again despite push to expand coverage

• SLC Agrícola buys Radar farmland in Mato Grosso for about $370 million

• JiveMauá raises first Fiagro to expand private credit for agribusiness

• Cosan weighs further asset sales after Radar deal

Macro & Markets

• Mato Grosso rail link expands grain logistics corridor to Santos

• Brazil soy expansion slows to smallest annual increase in 20 years

• China beef quota nears saturation as Brazil exports accelerate

AgTech

Grão Direto Opens 24-Hour Grain Trading - Grão Direto and ADM have tested a new Mercado 24h feature that lets farmers and traders close grain deals outside traditional market hours, including at night and early morning. In less than three months, the pilot moved 55,000 tons of soy and corn, enough to fill a grain vessel, with more than 100 trades completed. The feature complements Grão Direto’s AI assistant AIrton, reducing timing friction in a market still heavily shaped by manual processes and limited trading windows. Read more

Brazil Leads Latin America in AgTech Startups - Brazil accounts for 2,075 of the 2,653 agtech startups identified in the new Radar Agtech Latin America and Caribbean study, representing 78% of the regional total. The report, an extension of Embrapa’s Brazilian mapping effort, shows Brazil far ahead of Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay, supported by its stronger research, university and innovation infrastructure. Most startups operate “inside the farm gate,” with systems integration, data platforms, fertilizers, inoculants, plant nutrition, drones, machinery and equipment among the largest categories. Read more

Pyka Makes Brazil Its Main Autonomous Aircraft Market - Pyka is expanding rapidly in Brazil as large agribusiness groups adopt its autonomous Pelican aircraft for aerial spraying. The company now has 12 aircraft operating in the country and expects to reach 22 to 25 by year-end, with clients including SLC Agrícola, Amaggi, Natter Agro, ACP Bioenergia and Terra Agro. Brazil already represents 80% of Pyka’s agricultural aircraft market, helped by demand for night spraying, labor efficiency and regulation that has moved faster than in the United States. Read more

AI Push Exposes Agriculture’s Data Gap - Agriculture’s AI adoption still depends on a less glamorous foundation: clean, connected and usable field data. At SP Ventures’ Harvesting Innovation event, Grão Direto CEO Alexandre Borges warned that digitizing bad processes only scales mistakes, while GoFlux CEO Rodrigo Gonçalves said offline freight negotiations still disappear from the digital data layer. Both argued that AI in ag will require hands-on client work, better process design and a mix of off-the-shelf and proprietary models, especially where local rules and strategic data matter. Read more

Climate Tech

Viter Expands Into Foliar Nutrition - Viter, the agribusiness unit of Votorantim Cimentos, is moving beyond agricultural limestone into foliar nutrition, fertilizers and future biological products. The company has invested about $60 million between 2020 and 2026 to expand capacity and broaden its portfolio, including new foliar products launched in May. Viter says limestone demand remains stable despite tighter farm margins, with sales up 13% in 2025, but sees faster growth ahead in “mixtures” that combine calcium, magnesium, sulfur and other nutrients. Read more

Danone Ties Dairy Productivity to ESG and Protein Growth - Danone is making Brazilian dairy a core part of its 2030 strategy, linking demand for protein and functional nutrition with regenerative agriculture and decarbonization targets. More than 60% of the milk used in Brazil already comes from farms using regenerative practices, while its Jornada Flora program works with suppliers on emissions reduction, animal welfare, productivity and access to credit. The company says intensification, not herd expansion, is the goal, with supported farms reaching close to 24 liters per cow per day versus a national average of around six. Read more

Biotrop Targets U.S. Biologicals Growth - Biotrop is expanding in the United States after its first year of commercial operations generated just over $1 million in sales and presence across 23 states. The Brazilian biological inputs company, controlled by Belgium’s Biofirst, says early traction is measured less by revenue and more by product trials, repeat purchases and distributor relationships in regions including the Corn Belt and the southern peanut belt. Biotrop aims to reach $160 million in U.S. revenue by 2034, supported by university partnerships, local R&D and future plans for U.S. production. Read more

Brazil’s First Biomass Curtailment Raises Concerns - Brazil’s energy operator ONS ordered its first-ever curtailment of type 3 plants, including sugarcane biomass cogeneration units, cutting 1 GW of generation for four hours on June 7. The impact on sugar and ethanol production was limited, but mills warned that biomass cuts are more complex than solar or wind curtailment because bagasse also generates steam used in industrial operations. Tereos said it adapted without relevant losses, while sector groups fear repeated curtailments could disrupt milling schedules and reduce revenue from power exports. Read more

Petrobras Approves $1.2 Billion Renewable Fuels Plant - Petrobras has approved a $1.2 billion investment to build a renewable aviation fuel and renewable diesel plant at its Presidente Bernardes refinery in Cubatão, São Paulo. The unit is expected to start operations in 2030, with capacity to produce up to 15,000 barrels per day of renewable fuels. The project was already included in Petrobras’ 2026–2030 strategic plan and now moves into the final contracting phase, adding another large-scale signal that Brazil’s biofuels platform is expanding beyond ethanol and biodiesel. Read more

Komet Opens Irrigation Efficiency Lab in Brazil - Komet Irrigation has opened a $400,000 research lab in Brazil to study how water droplets behave between leaving a sprinkler and reaching the soil. The goal is to improve irrigation efficiency by measuring evaporation, wind drift, droplet size, water distribution and equipment wear over time. Brazil accounts for about 23% of Komet’s global revenue and has around 40,000 center pivots in operation, creating a large modernization opportunity as the company develops sensors to turn sprinklers into real-time data sources for irrigation management. Read more

Funding & M&A

Rural Insurance Budget Cut Again - Brazil’s rural insurance subsidy program lost another roughly $11 million after the federal government shifted funds to another Agriculture Ministry initiative. The move reduces the 2026 budget for the program to about $95 million, down from around $106 million after an earlier fiscal freeze and below the roughly $116 million executed in 2025. The cut comes as policymakers are also discussing ways to expand insurance adoption, highlighting the tension between broader climate risk protection and shrinking public subsidy capacity. Read more

SLC Agrícola Buys Radar Farmland in Mato Grosso - SLC Agrícola has exercised its right of first refusal to buy 41,200 hectares of farmland in Mato Grosso from Radar, the rural land company controlled by Cosan and Nuveen, for about $370 million. The properties had been under negotiation with Grupo Bom Futuro, but SLC already leased 17,600 hectares of the area and moved quickly to secure the full “Mato Grosso Block.” The deal marks a strategic shift from SLC’s recent asset-light leasing model, suggesting the land was too important to let go. Read more

JiveMauá Raises First Fiagro for Private Agribusiness Credit - JiveMauá has raised about $83 million for its first Fiagro, JMAG, focused on private credit for agribusiness. The fund is already half allocated, with deals typically starting at about $5 million, averaging three and a half years and costing borrowers around CDI + 5% per year. To attract producers and investors, JMAG offers two years of principal grace and a senior/subordinated structure, meaning the manager absorbs first losses before retail investors in the senior tranche, which raised about $70 million. Read more

Cosan Weighs Further Asset Sales After Radar Deal - Cosan is continuing its deleveraging strategy after the sale of Radar farmland assets in Mato Grosso, with SLC Agrícola’s purchase covered separately in this edition. The transaction is expected to generate about $117 million for Cosan’s holding company, while the broader Radar portfolio sold for about $370 million. Cosan may still pursue additional divestments, including stakes in Rumo and Compass, although after Compass’ IPO the company said there are no current talks or studies involving another Compass stake sale. Read more

Macro & Markets

Mato Grosso Rail Link Expands Grain Logistics - Rumo has started operations on the first 162 km stretch of Mato Grosso’s state railway, linking Rondonópolis to Dom Aquino and bringing rail closer to key grain-producing regions. The new BR-070 terminal is expected to handle up to 10 million tons of grain per year at full capacity, strengthening the corridor to the Port of Santos and reducing reliance on long-distance trucking. Future phases would extend the line to Nova Mutum, Lucas do Rio Verde and Cuiabá, although licensing is still pending. Read more

Soy Expansion Slows to 20-Year Low - Brazil’s soybean area is expected to grow just 0.9% in 2026/27, reaching a record 49 million hectares but marking the smallest annual expansion in 20 years, according to AgRural. The slowdown reflects tighter margins, high production costs, rising debt, expensive credit and caution over El Niño, which could delay planting in some states. The forecast suggests Brazil’s soy frontier is still expanding, but the era of easy area growth is getting harder to finance. Read more

China Beef Quota Nears Saturation - Brazil’s beef export quota to China could reach 94.5% by the end of June, according to Terra Investimentos, leaving only about 60,000 tons available under the annual limit. China set a 1.106 million-ton quota for Brazilian beef in 2026, and volumes already cleared, shipped or in the logistics pipeline are expected to bring the total committed volume to about 1.045 million tons. The quota could be exhausted at Brazilian ports by mid-July, potentially triggering additional tariffs and affecting Chinese buying decisions in the months ahead. Read more

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

This week’s Brazil AgTech Report sees Justoken bringing tokenized agro and energy derivatives outside traditional exchange infrastructure, drone use expanding quickly in the field, Phibro pushing custom vaccines to reduce antibiotic use, and ClickHouse bringing real-time AI database technology to Brazil.

In Climate Tech, Nestlé expands regenerative coffee sourcing, Petrobras, Bunge and Vibra certify deforestation-free soy to supply aviation fuel, Brazilian corn ethanol gets a low carbon score from the International Maritime Organization, and Mato Grosso eases its timeline for phasing out native biomass.

Funding and M&A sees Möbius buying its first farm through a Fiagro, Imaflora planning a cattle traceability Fiagro in Pará, FS announcing a new corn ethanol plant in Mato Grosso, Daabon beginning operations after acquiring Agropalma, and BTG increasing its exposure to Eucatex preferred shares.

Macro and markets focuses on land, logistics and infrastructure. SLC Agrícola’s farmland portfolio slows as the land market cools, Bom Futuro offers to buy Radar farmland, and the USDA warns that logistics bottlenecks could become the main limit to Brazilian agribusiness growth.

Table of Contents

AgTech

• Justoken Looks to Tokenize Agro and Energy Derivatives

• Drone Use in Brazilian Agriculture Jumps Tenfold

• Phibro Expands Custom Vaccines to Reduce Antibiotic Use

• ClickHouse Brings AI Database Platform to Brazil

Climate Tech

• Nestlé Expands Regenerative Coffee Sourcing in Brazil

• Certified Deforestation-Free Soy to Supply Aviation Fuel

• IMO Sets Low Carbon Score for Brazilian Corn Ethanol

• Mato Grosso Eases Timeline for Native Biomass Phaseout

Funding & M&A

• Möbius Buys First Farm Through Fiagro as Agro AUM Nears $200M

• Imaflora Plans Fiagro to Support Cattle Traceability in Pará

• FS Announces $400M Corn Ethanol Plant in Mato Grosso

• Daabon Begins Brazil Operations After Agropalma Acquisition

• BTG Increases Exposure to Eucatex Preferred Shares

Macro & Markets

• SLC Farmland Portfolio Slows as Land Market Cools

• Bom Futuro Offers $370M for Radar Farmland

• USDA Says Brazil Ag Logistics Bottlenecks Cost $14B

AgTech

Justoken Looks to Tokenize Agro and Energy Derivatives - Justoken and Vox Capital say tokenization could move more agro and energy derivatives into private markets outside traditional exchange infrastructure. Justoken, which began with tokenized soy, corn and wheat assets, is expanding into renewables, thermal energy, gas and oil, arguing that digital assets can simplify credit, traceability and trading of physical assets that are hard to commercialize or use as collateral. The company also sees barter, which represents around 40% of Brazilian agribusiness transactions, as a major opportunity for digitization. Read more

Drone Use in Brazilian Agriculture Jumps Tenfold - Drone use in Brazilian agriculture jumped from 3,000 to 25,000 units between 2021 and 2024, driven by lower input use, better field coverage and reduced crop losses. Embrapa says drones can help avoid crop crushing from tractors, saving up to 7% in soybeans and 4% in rice. The technology is also being used in soil quality research, while operators must follow rules from Mapa, Decea and other agencies covering spraying, training, registration and airspace access. Read more

Phibro Expands Custom Vaccines to Reduce Antibiotic Use - Phibro Saúde Animal is expanding its focus on alternatives to antimicrobials, including autogenous vaccines tailored to the specific pathogens found on each farm. The company says revenue from these customized vaccines nearly tripled last year, mainly in fish and swine, while its broader monogastrics business grew 13% in 2025. The strategy reflects rising pressure to reduce antibiotic use in animal protein supply chains and a shift toward more preventive tools, including vaccines, nutritional additives and immunomodulators. Read more

ClickHouse Brings AI Database Platform to Brazil - ClickHouse, a deeptech company valued at more than $15 billion, is entering Brazil with a focus on banks, fintechs and financial institutions that need to process large volumes of data in real time. Its analytics database platform supports AI-driven use cases such as credit, antifraud, risk management and transaction monitoring, processing billions of records in seconds. ClickHouse says AI agents can replace parts of traditional BI workflows, moving companies from static dashboards to continuous decision-making. The company operates in 24 countries and counts Meta, Netflix, Nvidia, Microsoft and Anthropic among its clients. Read more

Climate Tech

Nestlé Expands Regenerative Coffee Sourcing in Brazil - Nestlé says 53% of the green coffee bought for Nescafé now comes from farms adopting regenerative agriculture practices, up from 32% in 2024. Its Nescafé Plan reached 100,000 farmers in 15 countries last year, including more than 3,800 farms in Brazil, with practices such as pruning, agroforestry, cover crops, biological inputs and intercropping. The company aims to source all raw material from certified suppliers by 2030 and cut industrial emissions by 50% versus 2018. Read more

Certified Deforestation-Free Soy to Supply Aviation Fuel - Petrobras, Bunge and Vibra have certified the first global batch of sustainable aviation fuel made with soy grown in areas without recent deforestation. The pilot will supply 4 million liters of co-processed aviation kerosene at Rio’s Galeão airport, with 1% from certified soy oil crushed by Bunge in Rondonópolis. The certification shows emissions 70% below fossil kerosene, versus only 30% under default data, and Petrobras says refinery certifications could allow it to meet Brazil’s SAF demand by 2029. Read more

IMO Sets Low Carbon Score for Brazilian Corn Ethanol - The International Maritime Organization has set the default carbon intensity of Brazilian corn ethanol at 20.8 grams of CO2e per megajoule, far below the current maritime fuel average of 93.3 grams. Industry executives say the decision could help position Brazil’s second-crop corn ethanol as a future low-carbon fuel for shipping. Production has expanded sharply, nearing 10 billion liters in 2025/26, up from 2.65 billion at the start of the decade, with producers also investing in biomass and carbon capture. Read more

Mato Grosso Eases Timeline for Native Biomass Phaseout - Mato Grosso has eased the timetable for phasing out native biomass in large industrial users, including corn ethanol plants. A revised environmental agreement allows up to 40% native biomass use until 2034, with zero use required from 2035, replacing an earlier phase-down that would have started in 2031. The change follows industry pushback over feasibility, but keeps pressure on ethanol producers to expand planted forests, with demand expected to require forest area to grow from about 200,000 to 700,000 hectares by 2040. Read more

Funding & M&A

Möbius Buys First Farm Through Fiagro as Agro AUM Nears $200M - Möbius Capital has made its first direct farmland acquisition, buying a 5,500-hectare property in Mato Grosso through a new Fiagro structure. The manager, founded by former Credit Suisse executives, is nearing $200 million in AUM, with about 40% already tied to agribusiness. The strategy is to buy underdeveloped or degraded land, invest in infrastructure and sell after two or three years, using proprietary software to screen farms across land, environmental, logistics, climate and geomorphological factors. Read more

Imaflora Plans Fiagro to Support Cattle Traceability in Pará - Imaflora is planning a Fiagro to support cattle tagging in Pará, aiming to raise between $2 million and $10 million to finance inputs at better rates for producers who join the state’s traceability program. The idea is to use rural retailers and distributors as intermediaries, making compliance more attractive for small and mid-sized ranchers. The fund would link environmental conditions directly to credit, supporting Pará’s goal of identifying its entire cattle herd by 2030 and expanding certified, deforestation-free beef supply. Read more

FS Announces $400M Corn Ethanol Plant in Mato Grosso - FS will invest about $400 million to build its fifth corn ethanol plant, in Querência, Mato Grosso, with operations expected to begin in July 2027. The new unit will be able to process 1.3 million tons of corn and produce 580 million liters of ethanol per year. The announcement follows a recent $100 million credit line for another FS plant in Campo Novo do Parecis, reinforcing the company’s expansion in Brazil’s fast-growing second-crop corn ethanol industry. Read more

Daabon Begins Brazil Operations After Agropalma Acquisition - Colombian group Daabon has officially started operating in Pará after completing the acquisition of 100% of Agropalma’s Brazilian palm oil operations. The deal includes Agropalma’s plantation and forest reserve areas, six extraction plants in Tailândia and a refinery in Belém, while the Limeira refinery remains outside the transaction. Daabon, known for organic food production and integrated supply chains, says it will maintain traceability, zero-deforestation commitments and community programs, while opening a new investment cycle in Pará. Read more

BTG Increases Exposure to Eucatex Preferred Shares - BTG Pactual now indirectly holds almost 49.95% of Eucatex’s preferred shares through Econômico Agro Pastoril, which reduced its stake in the company’s non-voting shares. Eucatex is one of Brazil’s traditional producers of building materials, flooring and wood-based products. The notice says BTG owns 100% of Econômico Agro Pastoril indirectly, but there was no change in BTG’s holding of Eucatex ordinary shares, meaning the move affects economic exposure rather than voting control. Read more

Macro & Markets

SLC Farmland Portfolio Slows as Land Market Cools - SLC Agrícola’s farmland portfolio was valued at about $2.7 billion in 2026, but the average value of its arable hectares rose just 1%, far below the company’s 20-year average appreciation of 12.7% per year. The slowdown reflects weaker soy and corn prices and a more cautious rural land market. SLC is now looking to create value less through land appreciation and more through expansion, partnerships and irrigation, with plans to grow irrigated area from 19,000 to 58,000 hectares. Read more

Bom Futuro Offers $370M for Radar Farmland - Bom Futuro has offered about $370 million for 41,200 hectares owned by Radar, the Cosan-Nuveen farmland joint venture, in another sign of strong appetite for prime Mato Grosso land. The deal still depends on SLC Agrícola, which leases around 60% of the area and has a 30-day right of first refusal. For Cosan, the sale would support its deleveraging strategy and could bring in almost $120 million in cash, while SLC must decide whether to defend strategic land access. Read more

USDA Says Brazil Ag Logistics Bottlenecks Cost $14B - A USDA report says logistics bottlenecks could become the main constraint on Brazilian agribusiness growth through 2034, with storage, roads, ports, railways and waterways struggling to keep pace with production. The report estimates these limitations cost about $14 billion in 2025, while logistics already represent around 30% of farm production costs. Grain storage covers only 60–70% of national output, the deficit is especially severe in the Center-West and Matopiba, and licensing delays continue to slow new terminals. Read more

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

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In the past, private equity’s modus operandi in Brazilian agriculture was fairly clear: buy the companies selling to farmers, consolidate them, improve the management, and hope scale could turn a fragmented input market into a more profitable platform.

It made sense from Faria Lima because farmers buy seeds, fertilizer, crop protection, credit and services every season. The market is huge, many distributors were regional or family-owned, and a fund could bring capital, systems, purchasing power and professional management.

It is safe to say the model has not been a clear success. AgroGalaxy’s troubles, pressure at Lavoro and the wider stress in agricultural input distribution show how hard it is to turn farmer relationships into a scalable financial platform.

Selling to farmers is not just distribution. It is trust, advice and engagement. The input salesman is not just moving product. He is often part agronomist, part credit analyst, part relationship manager and part debt collector. He knows who pays late but pays, who is overextended, who is planting too much, and who should not receive another truckload on credit.

That knowledge does not fit neatly into a roll-up model. You can centralize purchasing. You can improve logistics. You can install better software. But you cannot easily replace the local human layer that makes the whole system work.

Private equity used to chase the farmer’s wallet. Now it is moving closer to the farm.

That does not mean buying land and waiting for appreciation, which is hardly a new idea in Brazil. The more interesting model is operational: buy, lease or back productive land, improve how it is managed, bring in capital and technology, and create value through better execution.

Argentina offers a useful precedent, although not a perfect comparison. Its pooles de siembra showed years ago that agriculture could be run as a managed operating system, using leased land, professional agronomy, outsourced machinery and outside capital.

Brazil’s version will not be a copy. The land market, credit system, crops, regulation and scale are different. But the basic idea is familiar: farming can be organized as a platform, not only as a family business.

A farm is not just land. It is soil, water, people, machines, biology, credit, logistics, weather, timing and risk. It is a production system and a financial system sitting on top of a living system. That is why farming is so hard to manage from far away.

Traditional farmers have always been protected by knowledge outsiders could not easily see. The best farmers know the land, the people, the rhythm of the season, and the risks that never appear properly in a spreadsheet. Capital alone has never been enough.

Technology will not suddenly replace farmer experience. That would be a lazy argument and, more importantly, wrong. Agriculture is too local, too biological and too uncertain to run from an office in São Paulo, New York or London.

There will still be labor. There will still be judgement. There will still be mistakes that only someone close to the field can catch. What technology can do is make more farm work visible, measurable and programmable.

Satellite imagery can show crop stress before it is obvious from the road. Weather models can improve planting decisions. Farm management systems can connect field activity to financial results. AI can help interpret data, spot anomalies and guide decisions.

Robotics and automation will not remove labor overnight. They will probably start with specific tasks, in specific crops, in specific regions where the pain is highest. Spraying, scouting, irrigation, harvesting and monitoring will not all change at the same speed.

The pace will vary by crop, region and task, but farming is becoming more data-rich. The more data it produces, the easier it becomes to manage with discipline. Not perfectly, but better than before.

For private equity, the equation changes when more of the operating model can be measured. Capital works best when management can scale. In input distribution, the relationship was hard to scale. On the farm, technology may make parts of the operating model more scalable over time.

Most farms do not underperform because one big thing is wrong. They underperform because many small things are slightly off. Poor machinery use. Late input decisions. Weak storage. No irrigation. Bad financial planning. Limited data. Thin margins leave little room for these mistakes.

If technology makes the mistakes easier to see, and capital makes them easier to fix, farmland becomes a different kind of asset. Not just something to own, but something to upgrade.

The weakness of the old model explains the push. The stronger pull is that new farm operating models are becoming more investable.

Transition agriculture is one of them. The world is asking more from food and agriculture. Not just volume, but proof. Not just yield, but traceability. Not just cheap calories, but lower carbon, better soil, cleaner inputs, safer supply chains and more transparent production.

That kind of agriculture takes money. Regenerative practices, biological inputs, irrigation, certification, MRV systems, storage, renewable energy and better data infrastructure all require investment. The farmer may want to transition, but the cash flow does not always allow it.

Many farmers cannot finance that shift alone. Private equity can carry upfront costs, finance the transition, measure the outcomes and connect production to buyers who care about more than volume.

This will not happen everywhere at once. The future of farming will not suddenly become a Faria Lima model of efficiency, spreadsheets and Patagonia vests. Agriculture does not move like software.

It will start at the edges. Specialty crops. Export chains. Sustainable commodities. High-value buyers. Farms with succession problems. Degraded land that can be improved. Regions where water, carbon, traceability or logistics create a clear economic reason to change.

Over time, those edges can set a new standard. Once a buyer starts paying for traceability, others follow. Once lenders price better-managed farms differently, others notice. Once data proves lower risk, capital moves.

Commodity thinking starts to look too narrow when food needs more identity. Commodities will not disappear. The world still needs soy, corn, beef, sugar, coffee, cotton and cheap calories. But the old logic of volume above all else may become less dominant.

The old commodity system was designed to make food anonymous. One ton looked like another ton. The next system may demand identity. Where did it come from? How was it produced? What was the carbon footprint? What inputs were used? Can the buyer prove it?

AI may push this further. If AI makes food demand more personalized, consumers may care more about taste, nutrition, sustainability, origin and health. Food may become less average. The farm will still produce physical goods, but those goods may need more attributes attached to them.

Data becomes the proof layer behind those attributes. Not because dashboards are exciting. They are not. Data matters because it tells the buyer, lender, insurer, regulator and investor what is actually happening on the farm.

The farm becomes the place where finance, biology and technology meet. If the data is strong, capital can price risk better. Buyers can pay for attributes. Insurers can understand exposure. Farmers can improve decisions. Investors can see whether the operating model is working.

The danger is that private equity repeats the same mistake in a new place. If it treated input distribution as simple distribution, it may now treat farms as simple assets. That would be wrong again.

Farms are not office buildings with rainfall. They are living systems. The soil does not care about an IRR target. The rain does not read an investment memo. A crop failure does not wait for the next board meeting.

But that difficulty is also the opportunity. Easy trades get crowded. Hard operating problems are where returns can hide.

The next strong agro investor may not be the one with the cheapest money. It may be the one that becomes a better owner of land, data, risk and transition. Better at knowing what to automate, what to measure, what to finance and what still needs human judgement.

That shift will not replace farmers. But it may change who sets the standard. The best farms of the future may be those with enough capital to transition, enough technology to measure, and enough management discipline to turn data into better decisions.

In the end, the field is where the model has to prove itself. Not in the fund deck, not in the spreadsheet, and not in the press release.

In the dirt.

Thanks for reading.

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.

This week’s Brazil AgTech Report starts with practical farm-level innovation. iRancho is using voice AI to make cattle management easier in the field, researchers in Paraná are preparing a hull-free pumpkin seed, Dux is tackling ammonia buildup in poultry houses, and VivaTerra is building a new agtech venture platform.

In Climate Tech, a group of Brazilian biologicals companies will take the country’s bioinputs model to California, Embrapa has added more Brazilian seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and a new tropical soil carbon model could unlock carbon credits in agriculture. At the same time, the government is pushing back against proposed changes to the Forest Code.

In Funding and M&A news, Leaf raised a $13 million Series B to expand its farm data infrastructure, Polato Sementes completed a dollar-linked financing structure and Amaggi raised $700 million in financing through the capital markets.

On the Macro & Markets side, Brazil’s protein trade keeps breaking records, but pressure is building in dairy. The federal government blocked nearly half of the rural insurance subsidy budget, while a possible strong El Niño is creating mixed signals for different markets.

And while Brazil and Morocco played out a 1-1 draw in their opening World Cup game over the weekend, trade between the two countries has never been stronger, with food exports flowing one way and fertilizer imports the other.

Table of Contents

AgTech

• iRancho Bets on Voice AI

• Hull-Free Pumpkin Seeds Near Market

• Dux Targets Ammonia in Poultry

• VivaTerra Builds MS AgTech Hub

Climate Tech

• Brazil Takes Biologicals Model to California

• Brazil Seeds Stored in Svalbard

• Brazil Builds Tropical Carbon Model

• Government Fights Forest Code Changes

Funding & M&A

• Leaf Raises $13M Series B

• Polato Raises Dollar-Linked CPR

• Amaggi Raises $700M CPR

Macro & Markets

• Protein and Dairy Trade Pressures

• Rural Insurance Budget Cut

• El Niño Splits Commodity Outlook

• Brazil-Morocco Trade Deepens

AgTech

iRancho Bets on Voice AI - iRancho, a cattle management and animal traceability startup, expects revenue to reach $2 million in 2026 after closing 2025 at $1.3 million, driven by growing demand for livestock digitization. The company says its new AI tool, which allows farm workers to record information by voice directly in the field, including in areas without internet access, is helping accelerate adoption and sales. iRancho also operates SafeBeef, a blockchain-based traceability platform, and is developing new tools for natural language processing, automation and real-time data analysis. Read more

Hull-Free Pumpkin Seeds Near Market - Researchers at the State University of Ponta Grossa have developed a hull-free pumpkin seed with commercial potential, after two decades of genetic crossing based on seed material originally obtained through a partnership with Austrian researchers. The seed is ready to eat without shelling, has a pleasant flavor, germinates in soil and contains higher levels of cucurbitacin, a compound associated with vermifuge properties. The team is finalizing laboratory tests before seeking registration with Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry, with potential uses in food, oil extraction and smallholder production. Read more

Dux Targets Ammonia in Poultry - Green chemistry company Dux Grupo is targeting a potential $400 million opportunity in Brazil’s poultry industry with Amonix, a biodegradable product designed to reduce ammonia formation in chicken houses. In tests in Brazil and Peru, the product generated average gains of 60 grams per bird, while reducing ammonia levels and improving shed conditions. High ammonia can affect bird health, feed and water consumption, immunity and weight gain. Dux, already present in animal protein chains with clients including JBS, MBRF and Aurora, plans to add real-time environmental monitoring to the solution. Read more

VivaTerra Builds MS AgTech Hub - VivaTerra Ventures is racing to raise $30 million in six months for a new fund and ecosystem designed to back early-stage agtech startups in Mato Grosso do Sul. Inspired by California’s Reservoir model, the initiative combines venture capital with AgroValley MS, a local platform for testing, validating and incubating technologies with producers, universities and research partners. The first incubated startups include Carbon Vantage, focused on soil carbon credit measurement, and Kerow, which applies imaging and biometrics to livestock traceability and disease detection. Read more

Climate Tech

Brazil Takes Biologicals Model to California - Brazilian bioinput companies, researchers and industry groups will present the country’s experience with biological products at the Salinas Biological Summit 2026, held on June 23 and 24 in California. The delegation includes Ideelab, Grupo Vigna Brasil, Lallemand, ANPII Bio and Esalq/USP, with panels on research, regulation, adoption and commercialization. Organizers say Brazil has become a global reference in biologicals thanks to regulatory progress, stronger links between science and industry and rising farmer adoption. The event should also expand cooperation between Brazilian and US organizations in bioinput research and innovation. Read more

Brazil Seeds Stored in Svalbard - Brazil has delivered 24 new seed samples to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, bringing Embrapa’s total deposits there to 8,149 samples since 2012. The latest shipment includes cashew, fava bean, peanut, castor bean and sesame seeds, stored at -18°C inside the Arctic mountain facility as a backup for Brazil’s agricultural biodiversity. Embrapa president Silvia Massruhá personally delivered the samples, highlighting the vault’s role in protecting genetic resources from climate risk, conflict and institutional failure. Brazil first joined the vault with rice and corn samples. Read more

Brazil Builds Tropical Carbon Model - Embrapa is finalizing ProCarbon-Soil, a new model designed in Brazil to estimate soil carbon dynamics in tropical farming systems and support agricultural carbon credit projects. Developed with Bayer, the tool uses Brazilian agricultural data, 4,290 soil samples and information from 370 scientific studies, aiming to simplify monitoring by focusing on total carbon stock and decomposition. Researchers say Procs performed similarly to Century in 50-year simulations, while reducing uncertainty versus direct field measurements. The next step is formal validation, including submission to Verra, a leading voluntary carbon market certifier. Read more

Government Fights Forest Code Changes - Brazil’s environment minister João Paulo Capobianco said the government will use legal tools to block changes to the Forest Code approved by the lower house in May. The bill still needs Senate approval and presidential sanction, but Capobianco said the government will seek a Senate rejection, a presidential veto or, if needed, a Supreme Court challenge. He argues the proposal weakens protections for the Pantanal, Cerrado, Pampas, parts of the Amazon and high-altitude Atlantic Forest areas by allowing vegetation removal in certain rural areas without prior authorization or compensation. Read more

Funding & M&A

Leaf Raises $13M Series B - Leaf Agriculture raised a $13 million Series B co-led by Leaps by Bayer and strategic industry investors to expand its farm data infrastructure for AI-driven agribusiness. Founded in 2021, Leaf connects, cleans and structures farmer-owned data from machinery, soil labs, weather stations, satellites and farm management systems, helping insurers, retailers, input companies and compliance platforms build tools on top of fragmented agricultural data. The company says it processes data covering more than 20% of global crop acres annually and helps partners support faster insurance payouts, field-specific recommendations and sustainability programs. Read more

Polato Raises Dollar-Linked CPR - Polato Sementes raised R$137 million through Brazil’s first public offering of a financial CPR linked to exchange-rate variation, giving the Mato Grosso seed company access to capital in reais while aligning the instrument with dollar-driven commodity markets. The raise follows a R$100 million investment in a new seed-processing unit in Pedra Preta, designed to double annual production capacity to 1 million bags. Founded in 1981, Polato produces soybean, cotton and sorghum seeds and says the funds will support growth, governance upgrades and more sophisticated agribusiness financing. Read more

Amaggi Raises $700M CPR - Agropecuária Maggi, part of the Amaggi group, issued its first financial CPR, raising R$3.54 billion through a single-series, book-entry operation distributed exclusively to professional investors. The instrument pays 100% of the DI rate plus a 1.08% annual spread, with semiannual payments and debt amortization over ten years from 2031 to 2036. Proceeds will be used for working capital, investments and support for the company’s own agricultural production. The CPR is backed by soybean and cotton volumes, with Itaú acting as settlement bank and bookrunner. Read more

Macro & Markets

Protein and Dairy Trade Pressures - Brazil’s poultry and pork exports hit record levels in May, with chicken exports topping US$1 billion and pork shipments reaching 129,400 tons and US$302.1 million. China, Japan, the EU and Saudi Arabia led chicken demand, while the Philippines remained the top pork buyer and Japan increased purchases sharply. At the same time, dairy imports reached the equivalent of 220 million liters in May, taking year-to-date purchases above 1 billion liters for the first time, as Brazil weighs antidumping tariffs on milk powder from Argentina and Uruguay. Read more on protein exports and dairy imports

Rural Insurance Budget Cut - Brazil’s federal government has blocked R$461.7 million from the Rural Insurance Premium Subsidy Program, almost half of the R$999.1 million allocated to MAPA for agricultural protection in 2026. The rural insurance line accounts for 45.7% of the ministry’s total budget freeze, part of a wider R$788.4 million cut that also affects agricultural development, technology research and Embrapa-related programs. The cut comes in an El Niño year and affects a program designed to help producers pay for policies covering losses from droughts, floods, frost and storms. Read more

El Niño Splits Commodity Outlook - A possible very strong El Niño could put 30% of global agricultural production at risk, but recent reports from Cogo Inteligência and Bradesco BBI suggest the impact will vary sharply by crop and region. Soybean and sugarcane may see modest productivity gains in Brazil, while corn faces risks if rains delay second-crop planting in the Center-West. Coffee appears more exposed, with high risk for arabica in Minas Gerais and robusta in Bahia and Rondônia. Bradesco BBI sees limited price impact overall, while Cogo is more bullish on sugar. Read more

Brazil-Morocco Trade Deepens - Brazil and Morocco moved US$2.8 billion in trade in 2025, with agriculture central to the relationship. Brazilian exports to Morocco totaled US$1.4 billion, led by sugar and molasses, which represented 58.1% of sales, alongside corn, live animals, coffee, fruit and spices. Imports reached a similar level, but were heavily concentrated in chemical fertilizers, which accounted for 84.8% of Brazilian purchases from Morocco. Trade has continued growing in 2026, with Brazilian exports up 9.6% through May and imports up 34.4%, reinforcing Morocco’s role as both food buyer and fertilizer supplier. Read more

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.

In Brazil AgTech news this week, automation and data move further into the field. Tevel’s fruit-harvesting robots are being tested in Brazilian citrus farms, ID-Scan brings cattle biometrics to Brazil, and researchers are using AI and satellites to forecast soybean productivity. A new Abstartups and USP study shows a more mature AgTech ecosystem, but one still facing a clear funding gap.

In Climate Tech developments, productivity and sustainability are increasingly linked. Embrapa found that native mandaguari bees can boost arabica coffee production, while Be8’s first large-scale wheat ethanol plant could create a new market for winter cereals in Rio Grande do Sul. FGV Agro also mapped a path for Brazil to cut beef emissions intensity by more than 90% by 2050.

On the funding front, AgroForte is scaling credit for the animal protein chain, Trag raised capital to expand AI-driven parametric insurance, and erural secured funding to build a one-stop cattle marketplace. BNDES also expanded access for individual farmers and rural entrepreneurs to existing credit lines for innovation, automation, AI, connectivity and farm software.

In Macro & Markets, Brazil’s Supreme Court upheld restrictions on rural land purchases by foreign-controlled companies, while the EU formalized new limits on Brazilian animal-origin exports from September 2026. In strategic minerals, the U.S. government will take a stake in USA Rare Earth, the company acquiring Serra Verde.

Table of Contents

AgTech

• Orange Robots Enter Brazil

• Cattle Biometrics Reach Brazil

• AI Forecasts Soy Productivity

• AgTech Study Shows Funding Gap

Climate Tech

• Native Bees Boost Coffee Yields

• Wheat Ethanol Opens Market

• Brazil Maps Low-Carbon Beef Path

Funding & M&A

• AgroForte Pushes Protein Credit

• Trag Raises for Climate Risk AI

• erural Raises for Cattle Marketplace

• BNDES Opens Credit for Farm Tech

Macro & Markets

• STF Upholds Foreign Land Limits

• EU Restricts Brazil Animal Exports

• US Takes Stake in Rare Earth Miner

AgTech

Orange Robots Enter Brazil Israeli startup Tevel’s autonomous fruit-harvesting robots are being tested in large Brazilian orange farms after being imported by Dal Tecnologia. The drone-like robots fly through orchards while connected by cable to a mobile ground base, using cameras, sensors and software to identify fruit by size, color and maturity before picking them with suction arms. A full system has six drones and can operate 24/7, with each drone harvesting one fruit every 12 seconds. The technology is already used commercially in Europe, especially for apples, and in Brazil is being positioned first for oranges, with potential future use in guava, pear and peach. read more

Cattle Biometrics Reach Brazil South African cattle biometrics technology ID-Scan is entering Brazil through DX Data Experience, with a focus on traceability, security and herd governance. The platform uses smartphone video to capture each animal’s muzzle print, creating a permanent digital identity linked to biometric data and herd information. The system can work offline during field capture and later sync data when connectivity is available, making it relevant for farms with limited internet coverage. DX says the technology could support origin verification, insurance, breeder associations, cooperatives, meatpackers and rural credit by creating a more reliable way to individualize cattle and use herd data in financial operations. read more

AI Forecasts Soy Productivity Brazilian researchers developed an AI-based model that combines Sentinel-2 satellite images, climate variables and historical IBGE data to estimate soybean productivity before harvest. The study, conducted by Esalq/USP and partners, analyzed municipalities in Goiás, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul across the 2019/20 to 2021/22 seasons. The model reached 72% accuracy, with an average error below 302 kilograms per hectare, and performed best around 150 days after planting, during the grain-filling stage. Researchers say the approach could support public policy, regional planning and future monitoring tools, although farm-level data gaps still limit precision for individual properties. read more

AgTech Study Shows Funding Gap A new study by Abstartups and the University of São Paulo mapped 170 Brazilian agtechs and found a more mature but still underfunded ecosystem. Around 32.9% of the startups have been operating for more than five years, while only 10% have reached the scale-up stage. SaaS leads as the main business model, used by 39.2% of companies, and 50.6% operate in B2B markets. The ecosystem remains concentrated, with São Paulo home to 38.8% of mapped startups, followed by Rio Grande do Sul and Minas Gerais. Access to capital remains the main constraint, with 52.4% of agtechs never having received investment. read more

Climate Tech

Native Bees Boost Coffee Yields A new Embrapa study found that managed colonies of mandaguari, a native stingless bee, can increase arabica coffee fruit production by up to 67% on branches located near the colonies. Researchers installed around ten colonies per hectare before flowering and compared productivity on nearby and more distant branches, linking the gains to pollinator activity. The study found that the approach worked even in self-compatible coffee cultivars and that pesticide use, when applied according to technical recommendations, did not generate measurable harm to the colonies. The findings point to managed pollination as a nature-based strategy to raise coffee productivity without expanding planted area. read more

Wheat Ethanol Opens Market Brazil’s first large-scale wheat ethanol plant is under construction in Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul, creating a new market for winter cereals in the state. The Be8 project will have capacity to process 525,000 tons of grain per year and could supply around 23% of Rio Grande do Sul’s ethanol demand, reducing dependence on imports from other regions. The plant is expected to create additional demand for wheat, triticale and other winter crops, while also producing coproducts such as DDGS, wet bran and vital gluten for animal feed and food industries. The project could connect agriculture, livestock and biofuels in a new regional value chain. read more

Brazil Maps Low-Carbon Beef Path A new study by FGV Agro, launched by ApexBrasil and Abiec at FAO headquarters in Rome, says Brazil could reduce the carbon intensity of beef production by more than 90% by 2050 under ambitious mitigation scenarios. The report highlights productivity gains already achieved: between 2004 and 2024, national beef production rose more than 240% while pasture area fell 11%, creating what researchers call a “land-sparing effect.” Under the most ambitious scenario, technologies such as integrated crop-livestock-forest systems and pasture recovery could cut emissions intensity to 5 kg of CO2 equivalent per kilo of beef, while stabilizing production and reducing required pasture area by more than 35%. read more

Funding & M&A

AgroForte Pushes Protein Credit AgroForte, a Yield Lab Latam portfolio company, reached about US$200 million in credit originated for Brazil’s animal protein sector and now aims to originate another US$200 million by the end of 2026. Founded around poultry and pork financing, the company has expanded into dairy and beef cattle after acquiring Rumicash, which added more than 20 dairy partners and access to roughly 20,000 additional producers. AgroForte now originates around US$6 million per month, with tickets ranging from about US$10,000 to US$400,000. Its main fund is expected to reach US$53 million to US$57 million in net worth by year-end, while the Paraná Fiagro, an agribusiness investment fund, could drive over US$110 million in additional disbursements. read more

Trag Raises for Climate Risk AI Parametric insurance startup Trag raised about US$500,000 in a round led by DOMO.VC, extending its 2024 raise and taking total funding to roughly US$1 million. The company uses satellite data, climate indicators and proprietary AI models to structure parametric insurance products for agribusiness, where payouts are triggered automatically when predefined climate conditions are met. Trag now operates across eight Brazilian states and eight crops, with insured value rising 47% in recent months to about US$15 million and more than 300,000 hectares analyzed. The startup plans to expand beyond insurance into a broader climate intelligence platform for producers, cooperatives, insurers and financial institutions. read more

erural Raises for Cattle Marketplace Brazilian livestock marketplace erural raised about US$1 million from Lighthouse and SP Ventures to accelerate investments in technology, AI, credit and logistics. Founded by Matheus Ladeia nearly a decade ago, the company has shifted from supporting traditional cattle auctions to concentrating transactions inside its own platform. It has already moved about US$58 million in animal transactions, including more than US$19 million in 2026, and its “one-stop-shop” model now represents around 60% of deals. erural is focused on beef cattle genetics today, but plans to expand into dairy genetics, breeding, rearing, fattening, inputs, services and financial solutions. read more

BNDES Opens Credit for Farm Tech Brazilian individual farmers and rural entrepreneurs will now be able to access existing BNDES credit lines for innovation, digitalization and technological modernization. The measure, approved by Brazil’s National Monetary Council, does not create new credit lines, but expands eligibility for programs such as BNDES Mais Inovação, BNDES Finame and Finame Baixo Carbono. Eligible investments include digitalization, automation, artificial intelligence, rural connectivity, precision agriculture, drones, sensors, traceability, telemetry, remote monitoring and farm management software. The change could increase demand for machinery, equipment, AgTech solutions and digital infrastructure across farming, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture. read more

Macro & Markets

STF Upholds Foreign Land Limits Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously upheld the restrictive regime for the acquisition and lease of rural land by foreigners and Brazilian companies controlled by foreign capital. The ruling confirmed the constitutionality of Law No. 5,709/1971, meaning companies with majority foreign ownership continue to be treated like foreign legal entities for rural land transactions. The decision also invalidated a São Paulo registry opinion that had allowed different treatment in that state, creating a uniform national interpretation. For foreign investors, agribusiness companies and funds with international capital, planned or previously structured rural land deals may now require closer legal review. read more

EU Restricts Brazil Animal Exports The European Union formalized Brazil’s removal from the list of countries authorized to export certain animal-origin products to the bloc, including beef, poultry, fish, honey, casings and other products. The measure takes effect on September 3, 2026, and is linked to EU rules on antimicrobial use in livestock, rather than a specific contamination or sanitary incident. Brazil was the only country removed from the list, while Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay remain authorized, reducing the political impact on the EU-Mercosur agreement. In 2025, Brazil exported US$32.3 billion in animal-origin products, of which US$1.6 billion went to the EU. read more

US Takes Stake in Rare Earth Miner USA Rare Earth signed a US$1.6 billion financing package with the U.S. Department of Commerce, giving the U.S. government an equity stake in the Nasdaq-listed company that agreed to acquire Brazil’s Serra Verde. The Goiás-based miner is described as the only operation outside Asia extracting, at commercial scale, four of the most sought-after rare earth elements. The package includes US$277 million in grants, US$1.3 billion in federally guaranteed loans and warrants for additional shares. The deal reflects Washington’s push to reduce dependence on China for minerals critical to AI, energy transition technologies and defense systems. read more

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading,

KFG

Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups across Latin America.