Brazil southern state seeks financing for irrigation
Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's third-biggest soybean-producing state, is seeking financing for irrigation projects to help avert crop losses during summer droughts, Governor Yeda Crusius said.
Crusius, who took office this month, said the state's bank will finance irrigation projects at small farms. She will look to the federal development bank and foreign investors to help pay for bigger projects.
Soybean production in Rio Grande do Sul, which accounts for a seventh of Brazil's output of the oilseed, slumped in 2005 after two summers of drought. “Every five years or so we have two droughts,'' Crusius said in an interview in Sao Paulo. “This is very dramatic.''
The state's soybean output fell to 2.6 million metric tons in the harvesting season that ended September 2005, a 73 percent drop from the 9.6 million tons harvested two years earlier.
Output rebounded last season to 7.5 million tons. Crusius didn't say how much money is needed to finance irrigation in the state.
(Published by Bloomberg, January 16, 2007)