page_title: Agriculture in Brazil
section_title: Fires
hierarchical_section_title: Agriculture in Brazil / History / Early farming / Fires
caption_attribution_description: Incêndio no Parque Nacional de Brasília; queimada e destruição ambiental.
context_page_description: The agriculture of Brazil is historically one of the principal bases of Brazil's economy. While its initial focus was on sugarcane, Brazil eventually became the world's largest exporter of coffee, soybeans, beef, and crop-based ethanol.
  The success of agriculture during the Estado Novo, with Getúlio Vargas, led to the expression, "Brazil, breadbasket of the world".
  As of 2009, Brazil had about 106,000,000 hectares of undeveloped fertile land – a territory larger than the combined area of France and Spain.
  According to a 2008 IBGE study, despite the world financial crisis, Brazil had record agricultural production, with growth of 9.1%, principally motivated by favorable weather. The production of grains in the year reached an unprecedented 145,400,000 tons. That record output employed an additional 4.8% in planted area, totalling 65,338,000 hectares and producing $148 billion Reals. The principal products were corn and soy.
  The southern one-half to two-thirds of Brazil has a semi-temperate climate, higher rainfall, more fertile soil, more advanced technology and input use, adequate infrastructure and more experienced farmers. This region produces most of Brazil's grains, oilseeds.
context_section_description: One practice of indigenous Brazilians was to clear land for cultivation by burning it. This provided arable land and ashes for use as fertilizer and soil cover.
  Scholars such as Monteiro Lobato considered this practice to be harmful. However, burning only became a problem when the Europeans adopted the practice aggressively around 1500, divided land into farms, began monocropping, etc. The combination of burning with these new farming methods decimated native flora.
caption: Fires are one of the problems still present in Brazilian agriculture.
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