Posted on 07/27/2005 2:30:37 PM PDT by STARWISE
When Walter Horita, a second-generation Japanese-Brazilian, staked his first claim in the raw savannah of Brazil's interior, back in 1984, there were no roads, telephones or running water in this stretch of the state of Bahia. Bandits had just murdered his neighbors and taken their land. Undeterred, the 20-year-old lived under a black plastic tarp as he cleared the first 420 acres of armadillos and anacondas for modest crops of soy and rice.
Twenty years later Walter Horita's pilot is flying him in his twin-engine Beechcraft over his 74,000-acre estate, tidy homesteads and blindingly white, high quality cotton fields that are nearing harvest and are collectively worth an estimated $60 million. "That was one of my best buys," Horita suddenly yells over the plane's engines, pointing down at the lush fields.
In 1998 Horita spent $60 an acre on a 17,000-acre farm, which, just seven years later, is worth at least $700 an acre. And there's still room for appreciation. The best cropland in the American Midwest goes for $4,000 to $5,000 an acre..snip
... because of poor U.S. crops and high demand from Asia, farms like Horita's cleared 60% to 70%.
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......... In the last several years Brazil has become the world's largest exporter of beef, soybeans, coffee, orange juice, sugar and chicken
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Today, having added 30 million acres of soybeans since 1995, the nation is the world's largest exporter of soy products.
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Brazil is number four in pork, for example, but probably not for long;
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........ on the debit side: its dysfunctional judicial system, corrupt legislature and mind-boggling bureaucracy.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Hm, did they mention how many acres in cocaine export?
bttt
Brazil has the highest number of Blacks (ex-slaves) of any country outside Africa. Someday, expect to see Zimbabwe type land 'redistribution'.
What I'd like to know is where is George Soros and his filthy rich environmental whackjob fellow travellers? Why aren't they buying up millions of acres of forest and preserving it? Hypocrites.
Soros is probably a silent partner.
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