Our same old problems
SP, September 17th 2009

October is here, and, with it, the pleasure of springtime, the rain that allows us to plant the dreams of a strong harvest, but the fear of the country´s poor logistics keeps awake all those involved in agribusiness.

Our ports already show lines of ships waiting for their turn to unload their fertilizers’ cargo and this delay increases, daily, the costs of agricultural products by up to US$ 10.00/ton.

Ships in the port, high demurrage cost (cost of the freight that will be paid for every day on the port), today this amount is around US$ 40,000.00 per day.

The ports of Santos and Paranaguá are crowded with ships, and, to this problem we should also add the cost of domestic freights, especially highway transportation, since this is the major Brazilian transportation mode.

This is true, although trains are fast, efficient, and able to carry up to 60 wagons at a time, each one with 100 ton, that is a total of 6,000 ton per train in one single trip, compared to 28 ton of a truckload.

If we used river transportation as an example, these figures would be even more absurd, since a convoy consists of up to 6 barges, each one at 1,700 ton capacity, making up a load of 6.600 ton, but this type of transportation is still very little known, since our investments in this area were extremely low.

Below, a chart that illustrates the growth of our harvests and the decline of our railroad transportation.


Comparison of Crop X Railroad --------------------------------------------------Grain
From 1999 to 2009 ----------------------------------------------------------------Railway

Fertilizers delivery continues quite below the delivery of previous years, but I don´t believe that we will necessarily harvest a lesser crop than that of 2008/2009, 134.490,000 of grain.

The Brazilian agriculture has shown the world a high technology production, with high productivity levels, but the logistics to carry the crops is the Government´s home work and it has neglected its work for many years.

Year after year we have discussed the same subjects before the planting of our super crops and I continue to dream of the day when our only concern will be to harvest our crops.

Elizabeth Chagas

 
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  After working for 30 years in the agribusiness and logistics areas, executive Elizabeth Chagas, attentive to the development and potential of the Brazilian agribusiness, noted that, to that time, small and medium-sized rural producers did not have at their disposal consulting services to meet their demands in their expertise areas which are import, export and domestic and international logistics... [more]  
   
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