Farming practices similar, different globally

Former Auglaize County Ag Extension Agent Jeff Stachler detailed his trips to Brazil and China in 2019, presenting them at Tuesday’s OSU Ag extension breakfast.

Brazil has a similar amount of farmland to the United States. The U.S. has 897 million acres, while Brazil has 867 million acres. Stachler visited Rondonopolis and Sao Paulo in March 2019.

He said moving grain is an issue in Brazil and it takes five days round trip to truck from Rondonopolis to the port city of Sao Paulo.

Stachler said he observed field sizes ranging from 230 acres to

450 acres which he says is larger than what you find in Auglaize County.

He said that Rondonopolis averages 60 inches of rain a year, whereas Lima averages 38 inches a year. The Brazilian city also has a higher maximum temperature at 83 degrees in Lima vs. 89 degrees. The soybean growing season ranges from September to March because of the weather and cotton is grown from January to July. Stachler discussed different strategies Brazilian farmers use for cover crop.

He explained how they use the fast growing Eucalyptus tree instead of gas for drying grain. Stachler also showed pictures of large farming equipment used in farming cotton.

Jumping to the other side of the globe, Stachler visited Heilongjiang, China in October of 2019. He said 54% of China’s population farms and that the field sizes are remarkably small.

The field sizes are small to allow for irrigation ditches which flood the rice fields.

Stachler explained that while the Chinese government owns the land, they lease it to villagers for 45 years and 30 years at a time. Farmers generally don’t farm bulk acreage. He said one villager he met only farmed 27 acres.

He noticed a lot of the Chinese soybeans were able to produce four and five bean pods and used mixtures with manganese and boron and zinc in the soil.

Stachler remarked that in China, most of the corn is picked, not shelled, and some farmers still shuck by hand.

He showed how rice harvesters are often much smaller than the combines found on western farms and many farmers hire out their harvesting work.