Brookfield Brazil has owned and managed rural real estate in Brazil for almost 30 years. In 1984, Brookfield Brazil acquired its first agricultural property, and spent the following decade modernizing its operations, increasing the size of the herd and enhancing the quality of the pasturage, breeding, genetics, equipment and the management team. After establishing a premier cattle ranching operation under the name Bartira, we began focusing on expanding our operations.
We currently own 170,000 hectares, located in 6 Brazilian states in the “Cerrado” area. The ranches are extremely well located in respect of climate, infrastructure and logistics. The agricultural assets are currently utilized for a variety of purposes, including cattle, sugarcane, soy, corn, rice, rubber trees and pineapple crops.
In the last years, we accelerated our asset growth rate by acquiring close to 100,000 hectares of additional agricultural land. We are increasing our farmland assets in Brazil because we believe that these properties offer extremely compelling investment characteristics, including:
- world-class productivity levels
- good climate conditions and logistics
- sugarcane and row crops production capacity
- discounted prices
Our investment in productivity and new technologies enhances our operations and helps us to best take advantage of these characteristics. This strategy has already begun to yield results, as our experience and industry recognition have attracted a renewable energy company to construct one of the world’s largest sugarcane crushing and ethanol production facilities on one of our properties.
As we expand our operations, we remain aware that the environment is fundamental to our existence, and that our business and the communities where we operate depend upon its health. As a result of this perception, we are dedicated to responsibly managing our social and environmental impacts through, among other things, open communication with stakeholders, fair labor policies, and conservation of natural habitat and riparian zones.