Brazil can double its agricultural production on existing farmland within the next 50 years, according to Dr. Carlos Alberto Labate of the University of São Paulo's Department of Genetics — and he puts a hard number on the land bank that makes it possible.

Speaking during a visit to the university, Prof. Labate said Brazil currently cultivates 80-100 million hectares but has at least 160 million hectares of slow-producing pasture. In his view, 50-70 million hectares of that land is underutilised and available for improvement through new regeneration technologies.

"So Brazil has no limit [to increasing production] without going into the Amazon. That's very important. See, without destroying the forest, the capacity that Brazil has to produce more and more," he said.

The role of biologicals

The technological driver behind the projection is biological disease and pest control. The University of São Paulo is involved in a Brazilian agricultural biotechnology company called Genica, which marks its 10th anniversary in 2025.

Genica identifies strains of bacteria that can protect crops from disease and pest attacks, offering a potential alternative to chemical controls. For a country whose tropical climate allows year-round growth, that matters more than it does in temperate systems.

"Because the tropical climate allows for growth all year round in several regions, there is no winter to 'kill off' pests or diseases, so crop disease control is a big area of focus.

"What we are doing with Genica is to exploit the native microbiota," Prof. Labate explained.

Three enterprises on one hectare

The professor described the agricultural management concept known in Brazil as "tropical agriculture", something he said the country has only recently come to understand comprehensively.

In several regions, the climate supports two crops per year on the same land — sometimes more — plus grazing. A typical sequence runs soya first, harvested and followed by "second-crop corn". Once the corn grain comes off, cattle graze the stalks. That is three farming enterprises on the same ground within one year.

"Tropical agriculture is something that we are learning more about now. Over the last 40 years, we started to understand that we have a different system of production," Prof. Labate said.

The shift in understanding has been hard-won. Prof. Labate, who studied at the University of Sheffield in the UK some 40 years ago, recalled what he was taught as a student.

"We learned how to prepare the soil with huge machines and we understood later on that this was wrong. Minimum cultivation is what we have to do to protect this soil and this is something people should understand.

"That's why Brazil is producing so much, because we have developed now in the last 40 years and we understood that we are producing in a tropical environment. We are using more and more of this knowledge and the biologicals today."

Intensification, not deforestation

The sector has adopted the mantra "intensification not deforestation", with growing focus on lifting output from land already in production rather than expanding the cultivated area.

Prof. Labate acknowledged the challenges ahead, including climate change, but maintained that Brazil holds a structural advantage. He compared the country with Australia, which he said has become progressively drier over the past century.

"Australia is a fantastic place, but they recognise now that the amount of water that they have is decreasing, and this is a major problem. Brazil has also the same problems in some of the areas."

He also sees a wider role for the knowledge Brazil is accumulating. The growing understanding of tropical agricultural production, he said, "has a good possibility to provide all these technologies to Africa".

Concluding, the professor said Brazil can contribute to food production for the next 50 years, with developments in new technologies — particularly in plant disease management — holding the potential to "double the capacity".

For farmers and agronomists watching the biologicals space, Genica's next decade of development, and the pace at which bacterial disease controls reach commercial scale on Brazil's second-crop corn and soya rotations, will be the signal to track.