Matheus Cury Pasqualotto, 26, grew up working on his family farm and is taking over the business with his brother and cousins.
Young entrepreneurs are stepping into agricultural leadership roles in the latest threat to US farming’s dwindling influence.
By Clarice Couto, Dayanne Sousa and Michael Hirtzer
Photography & video by Victor Moriyama
July 25, 2024, 7:00 PM UTC
Thanks to its cheap labor, year-round harvests and close ties with mega-buyer Beijing, Brazil has rapidly encroached on the US’s long-held position as the world’s top supplier of key crops. Now, it has a new tool in its bid to unseat American agriculture: Gen-Z.
An army of young Brazilians is forgoing service-sector and manufacturing careers to follow their parents into the hip-again family farming business, turbocharging the country’s already accelerating standing in the global food supply chain. They’re attracted to the industry’s rapid expansion, widespread use of technology and history of minting big-name billionaires. As the new generation joins the rural ranks, the age of the average farmer in Brazil has dropped to 46 years old. Meanwhile, America’s growers have never been older. That gap can’t be attributed solely to the countries’ overall median ages, which the US government says are within four years of each other.
“Young people are starting to see farming as an opportunity and not as something to do out of an obligation,” said Fernanda Nonato, who coordinates a program within Brazil’s national agriculture confederation that trains young people to take leadership roles in agribusiness.
Brazil has rapidly encroached on the US’s long-held position as the world’s top supplier of key crops.
Other aging countries, from Japan to Italy, risk similar shifts as their populations mature, but with the US and Brazil together supplying more than half of the world’s corn and nearly nine out of every ten tons of its soybeans, their demographic upheaval will have the biggest impact on what the world eats—and at what price. Brazilian soy and corn farmers are usually able to sell their crops at a discount to US ones, given a weaker currency and lower labor costs, threatening the viability of US farmers trying to compete on a global stage.
An aging rural population is the latest strike against a country that’s been losing its agricultural dominance for years. That standing has been a crucial source of political power, including crucially with China, the biggest agricultural importer. But US-China relations frayed during Donald Trump’s trade war, allowing Brazil to take the place of some US supplies. Already the top exporter of soybeans, Brazil may now be on pace to overtake the US in corn exports, too. As the US’s agricultural trade deficit widens to a record $32 billion in fiscal 2024, households will find themselves at increasing risk of supply-chain disruptions and price spikes when far-flung disasters hit.
US Is Losing Grip on Key Agricultural Exports Vs. Brazil
Corn and cotton are neck-and-neck, with Brazil leading in soy and chicken
Note: Data shows full crop year (ex. 1999 data shows 1999-2000 crop year) except for chicken, which is on a calendar year. Source: Foreign Agricultural Service, official USDA estimates
In contrast, farming is on the upswing in Brazil—and the new generation wants in on the action. As Gen-Z and millennial growers rapidly enter the sector, they’re increasingly adopting the use of precision agriculture, which lets operators monitor and analyze their fields and make data-driven decisions. Young Brazilians are also trying new kinds of crops and machinery, boosting yields. They’re adding irrigation, reducing chemical pesticides and adding GPS monitoring when they step into leadership roles at the farms once run by the previous generation.
“While most parents were averse to looking at their cell phones, their children are not. The educated child uses digital tools and is managing to get more bags per hectare,” said Alexandre Nonato dos Reis, director of a Deere & Co. dealership in the north of Mato Grosso, Brazil’s top soybean producing state. “Successors are improving the business.”
Four thousand miles away, Illinois farmer Brian Schaumburg, 69, didn’t have any heirs—let alone four—on deck to take over the operation when he went to retire. “They had no interest, and I can’t blame them,” he said of his children, who’d long since moved away. “They’ve seen the accidents, the drought and all of that, how hard life can be.” After three generations of family farming, “it will stop with me.” A neighbor now rents the land.
Older farmers can be very successful, given their years of experience and investment. But in the US, they’re also nearing retirement age. In 1950, US farmers were about 48 years old; by the latest census, it had jumped forward a decade. If there isn’t a clear successor in the wings to take over, a farm operator might sell to a conglomerate instead, accelerating the decline of America’s dwindling family farms.
“Farmers are the oldest workforce in America and with 370 million acres of farmland switching hands in the next 20 years, we can’t sit back and hope for the best,” US Senator Mike Braun, a Republican from Indiana who sits on the Senate’s agriculture committee as well as a special committee on aging. One in three farmers is preparing to retire in the next decade, and the US has too many barriers keeping young farmers from entering the industry, he added. “Keeping America fed means keeping America strong.”
Brazilian Farmers Are Getting Younger
Respondents by cohort making decisions at Brazilian farms
Note: Data may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Source: ABMRA
The number of US farms dropped about 14% between 1997 and 2022, during a period of high crop prices when US farmers should have been particularly flush. Even when young US farmers want to enter the business, it’s getting harder, with more than half a million US farms vanishing over the last four decades amid rising costs and rapid consolidation. Some would-be successors have also been turned off by US agriculture’s tight margins, slumping incomes and worsening weather.
In Brazil, farming is generally viewed as an attractive—and profitable—career path. Many of Brazil’s famous billionaires minted their fortunes in farming, including soybean mogul Blairo Maggi and sugar magnate Rubens Ometto. Family farms in Brazil tend to be large and many employ hundreds; some owners travel by private jet. Popular music celebrates the wealth and power of the countryside, pairing pickup trucks and cowboy hats with jewelry and champagne.
Soybean mogul Blairo Maggi’s illustrious career began in farming.
In politics, too, farmers in Brazil feel they have support. The country’s congressional agribusiness caucus counts roughly 60% of lawmakers as members. Earlier this month, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva unveiled record-breaking funding to support agriculture. Inheritance taxes are also low, even after recent reform. Paired with the country’s rapid increase in crop production over the past 50 years, those overlapping layers of support have spurred a legion of young heirs convinced of the benefits of spending their lives in the countryside. Agriculture made up about 24% of Brazil’s GDP last year, compared to less than 6% in the US, including food and related industries.
Luana Belusso is one such millennial putting her farm management education to good use in Mato Grosso. When the 35-year-old took over many of the financing and administrative parts of the business, one of her first moves was securing new financing from lenders. That money allowed the farm she runs with her father and brother to add irrigation and diversify from more traditional soybeans. The land now reaps three harvests in a single year.
A live feed of the Belusso family farm streams while financing and administrative tasks are performed at an office.
Much of today’s farmland in Mato Grosso was covered by the rainforest as recently as the 1980s, meaning farms could expand primarily by adding acreage. As local and international governing bodies have cracked down on deforestation, the new generation has had to find new ways to increase profitability.
“Young people are bolder, they take more risks,” said Belusso. “My father was bold in his time.”
US teenagers and recent grads preparing to enter the workforce may have more opportunities to pursue careers in a variety of sectors, from health care to tech. But undeniably, agriculture’s cultural power in the US isn’t what it once was. US public spending on agricultural research and development fell more than 20% in the decade ending in 2019 to about $5.2 billion to the lowest level since the USDA started recording data in 1970. Agriculture hasn’t been a big talking point on the US presidential campaign trail either, and even those farmers supporting Trump’s candidacy may bristle at the idea he’ll bring back the kinds of expensive trade disputes that embroiled the sector during his first term.
Read more: American Farmers Renew Trump Support Despite Trade War Fears
The Pasqualotto family plans to double production of corn and soy in the next three years and expand the business.
US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has been trying to reverse some of the trends and attract more young entrants. His agency has earmarked tens of billions of dollars to promote climate-friendly farm practices, like allowing farms to profit by monetizing their excess renewable electricity, as well as helping them tap into new markets like international food aid.
It may be working: The number of new and beginning producers in the US—those with 10 or fewer years of farming experience—increased between the last two censuses. Dave Green, executive director of the Wheat Quality Council, said US farming is more recently attracting a wave of hungry, young entrepreneurs who didn’t grow up on farms but still want to work the land.
“A lot of them get into agriculture because it seems interesting; some get hung up on French novels, and some get hung up on crops now that there’s drones involved,” Green said.
Enthusiasm aside, many still have a lot to learn. New entrants without the capital or family experience may not be able to produce at the same scale as generational farmers inheriting their land and know-how.
Meanwhile, back in Brazil, the four Pasqualotto successors have lived and breathed agriculture since they were kids. And since they already know the ins and outs, from driving tractors to trading commodities, they have big plans: double production of corn and soy in the next three years and maybe move downstream, adding a soy crushing plant, a corn ethanol unit or a poultry division.
“You get into a positive vicious circle looking to produce more every year, and that makes the work satisfying,” said 26-year-old Matheus Cury Pasqualotto. “My father often suggested that my brother and I study medicine, but it was never our strong suit; we grew up working with cattle and farming.”
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