How China is moving from buying Brazil’s agricultural commodities to supplying the technology behind them.
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.
Feed the Dragon
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.