There are a few things that would make Brazil a lot more stable economically (and even socially and politically) if we achieved self-sufficiency:
Fossil fuels: Currently, Brazil is self-sufficient in oil, but we export petrol to buy back refined fuels (gasoline and diesel). If we were self-sufficient in fossil fuels we would be much more immune to inflation every time OPEC decides to reduce oil output.
Wheat: We are the top of the world exporting foods. We produce 6x our current need. Nevertheless, we still need imported wheat. Ukraine war and dollar variations literary affect our bread.
Fertilizers: The largest world food producer needs imported fertilizers. The irony: our main supplier is Russia. This basically prevents Brazil taking any side in the conflict and affects our (and our buyers) food prices as much as wheat.
Achieving self-sufficiency in these three areas would be like a second independence for us (first was when we got free from Portugal).
> Nevertheless, we still need imported wheat. Ukraine war and dollar variations literary affect our bread.
This would happen imports or not. So long as wheat exports are allowed, the local price will settle on the world price as the product is able to flow to the highest bidder. An event like the Ukraine war will impact someone and that will drive the world price up.
Only under a perfectly free market system. A great many countries have export controls in place specifically for wheat and other vital commodities. States can also set price ceilings and floors. The US, for instance, passed the temporary Wheat Price Guarantee Act during WWI.
Brazil government runs a company called Conab that acts as a "buffer stock" for grains. It buys, stores and sells grains in large quantities in a continuos fashion, so the government can soften market fluctuations for those commodities over time.
That's fascinating. I've wondered for a while whether governments did that. Seems like a common sense precaution for preserving your country's food security.
In the latest 5-6 years the stock was basically zero-d. And the previous government even wanted to close CONAB. Now I believe they will return to stock commodity and stuff again, but there's a lot of pressure from agrobusiness to not stock again.
One of reason why food inflation in Brazil rise in the latest years is exactly because of CONAB stopped stocking it.
> Fertilizers: The largest world food producer needs imported fertilizers. The irony: our main supplier is Russia. This basically prevents Brazil taking any side in the conflict and affects our (and our buyers) food prices as much as wheat.
No, it means you can’t take a position without paying a cost. A lot of countries used to depend on Russia for various things, and they have paid a price to change this.
Brazil is not Europe. It’s not going to be some minor inconvenience like having people to take cold showers and virtual signal on the internet. There will be famine and the poorest people will die.
Europe got lucky with the cold, but for (many) other aspects has been very effective at diversifying very quickly away from Russian supply.
Sure, even the poorest countries in the EU are significantly richer than Brazil, but it's not like we didn't get significant food price inflation either.
Lucky? More like expected. The ten hottest years ever recorded all occurred in the last ten years. I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict next winter will also be unseasonably mild in Europe… and everywhere else.
It was still warmer than expected. Look at how prices shot up in advance, before declining when it became clear quite how slowly the stockpiled resources would be consumed.
> Brazil is not Europe. It’s not going to be some minor inconvenience like having people to take cold showers and virtual signal on the internet. There will be famine and the poorest people will die.
I don't get your point. Where do you see this fundamental difference between Brazil and Europe? Europe was highly dependant on Russia for it's energy supply, to the point that Putin was hoping to leverage that to conduct his genocide of Ukraine unopposed, and Europe successfully shed that dependence on a dime.
In your opinion, what stops Brazil from finding alternatives to Russia imports?
Brazilian is an extremely unequal country. The poorest population is very sensitive to foods' prices fluctuation. Rejecting Russian fertilizers could mean famine (and not only for Brazil).
There are some recent photos that show the result of accumulated inflation and unemployment during the pandemic:
How many people are currently starving to death in Europe right now because they cut ties with Russia? If Brazil were to suddenly cut all Russia imports, there would be places in Brazil with actual famines.
This was possible because alternative fuel sources were available. US fuel exports to Europe reached record levels, and political will was a large part of that.
Alternative fertilizer suppliers might not be available.
> Wheat: We are the top of the world exporting foods. We produce 6x our current need.
What? Source? Just some rough Google search results seem to consistently show China as #1 in production and the US being #1 in exports (and in the top 3 for production.) The first result I found showed Brazil as #4.
Maybe you're ultimately correct, but you should show a source when making those claims (I'm not trying to make a claim.)
"Brazil produces food for 1.6 Billion" [1] Our population is 250 million; that's probably where the 6x comes from. I don't have a source saying 6x but the "Brazil produces food for 1.6 Billion" is easy to find from many reliable sources; just a google search away.
With regards to "largest food exporter", I stand corrected. The correct is "the largest net exporter in the world" [2] of "of agricultural commodities and related food products".
The trouble is, when you're making claims which are obviously wrong, then it throws the entire argument into question. If you're getting easy things wrong, then I'm not going to bother with the rest. It's like spelling and grammar issues on your cover letter. You might be a great hire, but come on, at least deal with the easy stuff.
It's perfectly possible to evaluate the other claims in the comment independently from this one. The behavior you're advocating (refusing to consider the rest of the comment because of one error) not only makes you look like a dick, it also makes you worse informed. Bad take dude
Maybe you're giving it a pass because it's a quick to read comment. If this is an essay or a book, I'm absolutely going to consider skipping it at the first major error. This is especially the case if the book is heavy on building a case which would need to be backed by facts (sources.) If the author isn't willing to include sources to back up claims which are passed as fact, then I'm not going to do the work myself. It's difficult enough to open the time to read the thing in the first place. And I would be doing myself a disfavor by believing any of it.
Hum... Nope, Brazil is not really self-sufficient in oil. It was for a while, but the production did not keep up with the domestic consumption. Anyway, Brazil exports its oil and imports some slightly more expensive one because the existing refineries weren't built to process the relatively recently discovered kind of it that consists on most of the production. And there is little sense in upgrading them.
About wheat, yeah, nobody ever place any priority on being self-sustaining. That's because it's not really important. Brazil has a couple of neighbors that produce enough wheat for supplying it, and need quite a bunch of stuff Brazil produces. The only reason anybody is going for self-sustainance now is because it's profitable, and things will change once it's not.
On fertilizers, well, Brazil can not produce enough of the material for the fertilizers it imports.
Sigh. Is it news to you that this guy's a socialist? He literally called himself "a refined socialist" last year before the elections. Why do I have to keep reminding people of this fact? He literally founded a forum for south american communists to gather and discuss how to install this cancer everywhere. There's fucking decades old videos of him talking about installing socialism in Brazil.
It's seriously tiresome having to say this stuff over and over every single time.
I'm from Spain. Lula it's closer to our current social-democratic goverment than communism.
It just happens that you are so right-leaned that you don't even realize what are you looking at.
"Variants of communism have been developed throughout history, including anarcho-communism, Marxist schools of thought, and religious communism, among others. Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, Leninism, and libertarian communism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around those."
So I'm confident the South America Communism/Socialism is as Communism as your Life-style left, where you support 300 genders and drug abuse. They are all communism, which as wikipedia describes: "Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement"
First, Lula is adept of the so-called "class conciliation", therefore he is not a communist by any means.
Second, Lula is against the idea of a revolution, with makes him a social democrat on the left spectrum, at most.
Third, you can't just use US left as a model for the rest of the world. US left (mainly the democrats) is a pale left when placed alongside the Brazillian left, for example.
> Lula is adept of the so-called "class conciliation", therefore he is not a communist by any means.
That he even mentions this marxist class bullshit is bad enough.
> Lula is against the idea of a revolution, with makes him a social democrat on the left spectrum, at most.
If you actually watch the decades old videos where he explains why he's against it, you'd realize it's because he thinks they don't work as a communist regime installation strategy.
His plan is to do it small bits at a time so that nobody notices. Boil the frog slowly so it doesn't jump, as they say. Since he's a cancerous old guy, he's been accelerating his schedule as of late so it's become a lot more obvious.
I know exactly what I'm looking at: a communist. The brazilian government as a whole might not actually amount to a communist state but it's certainly not for a lack of trying on his part.
that will be like the case with Russia and China: The leftist are going to start to call it right. Now Russia and China are Right, not Left anymore. Cuba and Venezuela too. North Korea? radical right! Left for them, today, are just Germany and Norway.
During the 20th century, real-world communism (as opposed to the academic theory) always leaned on ye olde Russian imperialism, which, reincarnated under a new red flag, lent it the necessary muscle. Of course it was awkward to admit that the Communist bloc is actually an extension of the Russo-Soviet empire, so a lot of ink was spilt to recast the Russians/Soviets as liberators, bringers of peace and progress.
As of today, Russia is no longer even superficially left-wing in its state ideology, but the old personal and political ties to the far left in the rest of the world are still there. That is one of the reasons why "tankies" support the invasion of Ukraine and even cloak their support in the same "peace movement" jargon recycled straight from the Cold War era. That is also why countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are sympathetic to the Russian imperial project.
Another reason is shared anti-Americanism, of course. The US has a much worse record track in Latin America than in Europe, no wonder that systemic competitors try to exploit it.
> The US has a much worse record track in Latin America than in Europe, no wonder that systemic competitors try to exploit it.
I liked your explanation, but this part - I agree with you, thats the sentiment there - BUT it just doesnt make sense at all. Europe exploited much more the Latin America, than US did. US was actually one of the first countries that fought this exploitation.
And? Castro had a friendship on a former right wing minister from Franco's dictatorship in Spain, as they shared some of culture traits and heritage from an Atlantic region in Spain, Galicia.
Binding left and right populisms together wont make Russia left-leaned. Neither with do that with China.
so in your opinion its Left until it gets dirty, then its Right, and Left is something like Heaven, that people will never reach, but we should still try it over and over again? grow up.
These were Capitalists. A progressive capitalist, yes, but Right leaned economically. There's nothing Leftie on being a poshy Californian with the pockets full of bucks even if you don't give a shit on any religion or Conservativism.
The same way you can't call yourself a vegetarian when you eat a weekly BBQ in a Texan rancho.
That's where you are totally wrong. Mostly people that are communists, don't live under communist regimes. Never went to a communist country. They are mostly rich kids, that "read" Marx and thought they "got it". Funny part is that Marx himself was the same kind of person. Rich kid, never worked and thought that he understood the world enough to try to fix it..
In America, maybe. In Europe, the social-democracy it's a big spectrum.
There's the liberal left, the tankie left, the conservative left (which in the end it's 99% close to the Italian/Spanish Fascism), and the libertarian communism, also known as Anarchist comunes, but you need highly educated people there. No, not rich, just truly educated. In scientific and technological fields.
On Russia, today they're closer to fascism than to Socialism. No one it's Communist in the Putin/Dugin circle. No one. Just thugs, corporate mafias and a right wing nationalism with an homophobe discurse against the West, influenced by the Russian Orthodox church.
Not so different to the Evangelican Neocon from the USA. Switch the American flags on a Neocon for the Russian one, change a little bit its Christian branch and you'll get the Russian Ivan full of hate against Western progress since the 1789's revolution and Human Rights. It probably listens to the Orthodox Pope and he listens to the Russian equivalent of Fox News. Oh, they have their version of Alex Jones, too.
With the same conspiranoic crap.
it is actually not different than Soviet Union under Staling. So wasn't Staling a Socialist?
Check this out: " LGBT themes and issues faced increasing official government censorship and a uniformly harsher policy across the entire Soviet Union. Homosexuality was officially labelled a disease and a mental disorder in the late 1920s (specifically over a period from 1927 to 1930)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_Russia. People keep trying to avoid call Left by their name. You cannot simply start to call everything bad Right and the Heaven Left. Its absurd.
It's a totalitarian oligarchy which is the usual outcome of socialist revolutions. It life's of resources (a surplus of labour force) as it's internal structure prohibit advancing up the economic ladder.
he s gonna reply that democrats and republicans swapped party so the republicans are the racists. the tired tropes of finding reality in twisting history so that it can back up what the hivemmind tells you. lula is a communist, always has been, people seem to forget what he did.
Yeah. It's honestly quite shocking to me that people don't seem to know he's a socialist. As recently as last year, he said words like "the state should determine what citizens need to survive" in front of a camera, literal communist speech on its own and it gets even worse if you consider the complete context of the video. And yet people are incredulous. Every single time that I mention it in passing, the thread degenerates into me bringing up old facts about brazilian politics as if it was news because otherwise I look like an idiot in public. People try to gaslight me and call me a moron for taking the guy's words and actions seriously.
Russia still represents itself as the successor of the Soviet Union, and hardline communist parties still hold onto the (whitewashed) history of the Soviet Union to validate their existence. Russia's armed forces in Ukraine still fly the Soviet union flag, and Putin's propaganda still holds onto Soviet leaders like Lenin to push their propaganda.
To the eyes of hardline communist parties throughout the world, Russia represents the heir of the Soviet Union thus communism, and that's by Putin's design.
It's not like Brazil want to take sides either, so this might be a excuse, not a reason. And there is the BRICS, so taking side is not a good idea.
BTW, unlike Europe, there is no consensus here that the side to be taken is with Ukraine.
I gope you guys are not going to copy USA & Europe in term of bread consumption, it's not worth! eat more vegetable, like peas, even quinoa, fruit, they're adapted to your climate and much more nutritive and healthy
Bread is and has always been a staple in Brazil. Quinoa is a fairly recent development over there, and is quite expensive. Definitely not adapted to Brazilian climates although it can be made to work. Wheat OTOH is very adapted and cheap.
It might be a net benefit, but distributing that wealth from oil producers to oil users within Brazil isn't easy. And when oil users see the price of their oil going up, that's what triggers inflation.
> Achieving self-sufficiency in these three areas would be like a second independence for us (first was when we got free from Portugal).
Every country in the world is dependent on trade, which is saves a lot of money over self-sufficiency. North Korea is the only country that tries self-sufficiency.
If it costs you $100/bushel to produce wheat and you can buy it for $60/bushel (I'm fabricating numbers), why produce it?
Its nice when you can buy $60/bushel wheat. Its not so nice when your dealer cuts you off.
The extra $40/bushel you pay to produce in-house, thats your insurance policy against having your supplies cut off. In a world where geopolitical lines are shifting, it's a matter of national security and optionality to have your own food production capacity. Risk management.
That's not risk management, that's a panicked reaction. Risk management accepts risk, takes into account likelihood and cost, and finds the most economical outcome.
Taking into account the most economical outcome in the short/medium term also can make your country or community poor in the long term. If you care about the future of where you live, its important to cultivate and support local industry, even when its more expensive.
> Taking into account the most economical outcome in the short/medium term also can make your country or community poor in the long term. If you care about the future of where you live, its important to cultivate and support local industry, even when its more expensive.
Your solution is the short-term one, maybe not even that. In the long run, your community is much better off producing what it does best and trading with others for what they produce best, rather than everyone trying to do everything at some mediocre level.
Your solution is like Microsoft building its own furniture and cars and flying its own planes, rather than making software and buying the furniture, cars, and air travel from those who are expert in it.
Your reply comes right out of ECON 101, and is broadly speaking correct. Still, you've missed the point.
Let's use your example, Microsoft. Companies have different incentives than communities or countries, but I think we can make this work.
For many years, Microsoft only sold software, and let others who were experts in hardware make the hardware and install microsoft on it. Later, they realised that it was strategically important to manufacture their own consumer hardware, and now you have the Surface lineup. Maybe in the near future, they will decide they need to start manufacturing their own chips. If they do that, it's not going to be cheap, especially in the short term. In fact, Microsoft might never be able to produce chips more cheaply than Intel. But they still could choose to do it in-house (or just buy Intel) if the alternative is to lose their dominant position in the market.
What a bizarre things to say. First of all, are you an economist who can comment on other people's sophistication? Second, who cares? The merits are what matters, and you agree it's "broady speaking, correct".
And risk management in this sphere consists of subsidizing local producers.
The world is three meals away from anarchy, being dependent on the caprice of global markets for food is a great recipe for getting regime-changed by starving people.
> The world is three meals away from anarchy, being dependent on the caprice of global markets for food is a great recipe for getting regime-changed by starving people.
The evidence shows that vastly overstates the risks: It hasn't happened or even come close to happening yet. In fact, name any place that has turned anarachic due to food shortages.
The modern global markets are not capricious, but the most efficient, effective distributors of resources in the history of the world.
It is nice to be self-sufficient on survival staples like grains if that is an option. If your competitors are driving a hard bargain and the downside is that you don’t get video game consoles, it isn’t the end of the world, you can call their bluff. If the downside is starvation, it is a bit tougher.
> If it costs you $100/bushel to produce wheat and you can buy it for $60/bushel (I'm fabricating numbers), why produce it?
“Certain countries” are well known for subsidizing domestic grain production and dumping it on overseas markets which ends up hurting the local farmers as they can’t compete on prices. Given enough time these countries become totally dependent on the imported grains and their entire farming industry goes away.
You make the choice on if you’re comfortable depending entirely on foreign production of foodstuffs.
according to al gore - who became a multi millionnaire if not billionaire thanks to his fake prediction - we are already dead so we might be living in a simulation.
Are renewables economically viable? I don't expect any nation that isn't "rich enough" to go green, but the trends of it becoming cheaper means it will become the cheapest means.
Are we there yet? My assumption was the political climate of Brazil was primarily pushing oil dependence
Current political climate seems to favor making gasoline cheaper for the poorest brazilian consumers at pretty much any cost. I've read that they want to uncouple local fuel prices from world wide market prices. They really want to wash off the bitter taste left by the utterly insane prices during the pandemic.
Thus their move will likely be to somehow dictate prices to Petrobras, profitability be damned. Petrobras stock has already taken several nosedives since this guy took office.
And frustratingly they could, if the current system of renewable wholesale prices being pinned to the most expensive, fossil fuel, prices were removed. There’s some complexity there because building of renewable generation is incentivised via being able to charge more for it, and therefore break even on the investment earlier, but it certainly seems like that would have been a better move than the government just outright subsidising massive price increases, thus transferring money directly from taxpayers who are feeling the pain of inflation to some of the richest companies in the world.
Watch this space.. Green Ammonia is going to be a big new development for Brazil soon... or at least there are a couple of green hydrogen companies that trying very hard to get that up and running in Brazil right now.
"would make Brazil a lot more stable economically (and even socially and politically) "
It's the other way around.
Brazil and Argentina especially should be rich, what's lacking is coherent social organization from top to bottom. Obviously it matters more at the top, but it has to be borne by regular people as well.
Same could be said of other Central/South American nations, but geographic factors and natural resources do give a material advantage that can be leveraged into a lot.
Consider that Canada, unlike most other so called 'advanced nations' - does not actually have lot of advanced industry. Research, yes, but 'applied' - no. And yet, because it has a 'free export card' with natural resources, it can import the equipment and materials necessary to support the rest of the regular domestic economy, which benefits from ultra boring politics, 'functional' bureaucracy, low levels of corruption.
Innovations can only be leveraged by organizations that have the coherent ability to make use if them.
The 'low hanging fruit' in Brazil is governance, though I hope this Wheat helps.
Why don't the states there organize into a southern United States? It feels silly to talk about self-sufficiency and all when the analog at country level is the USA states. Nobody would expect e.g. Rhode Island to feed itself, but thankfully there is the Midwest. Maybe Bolivar's dream could come true one day.
The United States grew (colonized, captured, appropriated - feel free to chose the verb that most agrees with your view - it doesn't matter too much) into relatively uninhabited land from a starting point with a relatively uniform culture and ideals. As areas got to a large enough population that they could become a state, they were added to the union.
South American is already mature. The countries there have different political situations and relationships. Trying to bring them into one federal republic is a non-starter -- it ain't gonna happen.
A better model would be the EU where you have mature countries removing trade barriers between them, allowing free immigration, and a single currency. This was anchored by a few large countries that had relatively low corruption, peaceful relations and strong economies.
South America... doesn't quite have a strong set of low corruption and strong economies. There are regular coups and a number of ongoing civil wars that would make trying even for a loose coalition of countries in South America difficult.
The Latin American countries are probably too different to unify. Some are led by right-wing populists (El Salvador) and some by left-wing ones (Colombia, Brazil). Some are rich (Uruguay) and some are very poor (Nicaragua, Venezuela). Some are huge and powerful (Brazil and Mexico) and would be able to completely dominate the rest. Some are liberal democracies and some are one-party states.
On the cultural level, they have some similarity but not to the extent that they view each other as part of the same “nation” or “people”. One shouldn’t exaggerate the effect of speaking the same language: consider the fact that the US, Singapore, and Zimbabwe are all English-speaking officially (or de facto officially in the case of the US). Also Brazil does not even speak the same language as the rest.
Some differences do of course exist between the various US states but to a much, much lesser extent.
I think your first paragraph describes the EU/EEA too, or at least it did when Poland et al joined in 2004.
Germany and France (and the UK at the time) dominate. Poor nations like Poland and Greece with rich ones like Norway. Conservative countries like Hungary alongside progressive social democracies like France and Sweden.
Well, the EU is not one country and probably never will be. One of the most important countries has already left, euroskepticism is a major political force in many of the remaining ones, the idea of “ever closer union” seems to be dead, some natural future members (Turkey, Serbia) are indefinitely stalled, and even mildly authoritarian members like Hungary and Poland (which, btw, are infinitely more liberal and democratic than Cuba or Venezuela) are constantly in conflict with the central institutions.
I doubt there will ever be even an EU-like structure encompassing Latin America, but even if there is, that would be a far cry from becoming a united sovereign state.
The geography really makes it hard to create a cohesive whole. The rainforest is almost impossible to traverse by road.
It doesn’t help that the two largest countries, Brazil and Argentina, speak different languages.
It’s hard to bring people together when they speak different languages and have to take a plane or cross difficult terrain to meet each other.
Well, Bolivar tried but, luckilly, failed. Good for us he was no big military genius, and a coward in battle. We don't need a Napoleon wannabe in South America, thank you very much.
Would you mind expanding a bit on the whole “no big military genius” and “coward in battle” or share some links on it? I’ve heard and read many critics of Bolivar but never any of the sort you mention (not trying to call you out or anything, just genuinely curious about it)
I've read it a couple years ago and it made a big impression on me, had to track it down now.
I misremembered it as San Martin's opinion while old and dying in France, but it appears to be the description given by Karl Marx to Engels (apparently on a letter sent on 1858-02-14, though I can't find that letter right now). This article [0] on the Metapedia explains a bit of the history on why Marz was talking about Bolivar, but also says that modern marxists don't share this view.
This sounds amazing, but at the same time, I am concerned about the rain forest. Obviously more economically useful crops would accelerate repurposing the rain forest. Maybe the world would need to subsidize Brazil more to keep the rain forest? And could Brazil be expecting more subsidy with this development?
I'm sure some actual Brazilians will comment since many are active on HN.
I remember being asked in elementary school to help "buy a piece of the Amazon to stop it from being cut down". I mentioned this years later to some Brazilian friends, and they found it amazing, saying first that it almost certainly wasn't a specific plot of land, and second that enforcement of property rights and anti-poaching laws in spread-out rural areas has been spotty, and also hindered by violence and corruption.
So I guess it's a thorny question, if someone in Brazil accepts such a subsidy, how that ultimately translates into physically stopping people from making illicit uses of Amazon lands.
Edit: In theory, stopping an illicit farm (which takes time to grow and has to be tended and harvested) would be easier than stopping someone with a pickup truck and chainsaw from just grabbing a bunch of trees for lumber. On the other hand, the U.S. has spent tons of money trying to eradicate poor people's coca farms in the Andes and it doesn't seem to have had the level of success the government hoped for (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_eradication).
Meanwhile, some people are apparently still maintaining wildcat marijuana farms on U.S. Federal lands. Wheat farms aren't as profitable as coca or marijuana, but even suppressing certain kinds of farms in remote enough areas seems like it can be non-trivial!
I don't think it's mutually exclusive. You can deny chainsaws to bad actors while also trying to reduce the number of bad actors compassionately and nonviolently. In the drug war analogy, maybe decriminalize possession but heavily regulate production/sales.
Most people with chainsaws are trying to feed their family. They may be “bad actors” at one scale, but they are “good actors” to the people whose opinion matters to them.
It is this kind of language, and indeed this kind of problem, that makes resolving it so complicated.
I think it depends. To me bad actor seems more like a technical term than a moral one. I can see how it's easy to pass judgment on people described literally as "bad" in some way, but only if I'm unprofessionally intertwining my morals with my ethics. If you don't believe in punishment in the first place then such terms lose their deontological charge.
If a technical term has the effect of framing a specific viewpoint, then it's perhaps not a very good technical term. I'm not actually convinced that it is a technical term, but even if it is, that's ultimately just an argument from authority.
The word "induction" frames a very specific viewpoint for a mathematician that's different from the specific viewpoint of an electrician. Your argument falls apart if you consider that people can have different viewpoints.
Also, bad actor is usually used in cybersecurity contexts. It could be a scammer or your CTO testing you - shouldn't really matter.
No, the word “induction” has a different meaning in different contexts. So does “transformer”. So does “embedding”. So what?
“Bad actor” is a common phrase that frames a subject as acting maliciously. It’s not a term of art, and this framing is compatible with its use in security.
Farmers with chainsaws are not automatically bad actors because their actions are mostly not malicious. They are often acting legally, or are encouraged to act illegally under a regime of intentionally loose enforcement (“everyone does it”). It is a political problem where the term “bad actor” is relative to the political position of the observer.
That’s why terms like “bad actor” are unhelpful. It frames all the subjects as malicious, when in many cases their actions are perfectly reasonable and often perfectly legal.
Some farmers with chain saws are bad actors, but not all of them. We need to help all of them.
This kind of stupid hyperbole is not really conducive to any civil discussion. Calling Lula a communist in 2023 is akin to calling Tony Blair a communist in 1997: misguided red-scare tactics against someone who basically embraced neoliberalism in favour of any socialist tendencies to achieve power.
Don't be that kind of person, it just make you look dumb.
You're saying I can't call Lula, the guy who called himself a "refined socialist" not even a year ago, a communist. Really now.
Guess I'm gonna insist on looking dumb then. It's shocking to me that the fact he's a communist is news to people. If you really believe this guy... Go ahead and give him your Amazon subsidies. Watch him spend it on absolutely critical matters like massive raises for the supreme court judges who are persecuting his political enemies.
Him calling himself that for political points is extremely different than being one. Lula is not a communist, he hasn't been since his first 2 terms between 2002-2010. He embraced completely the "Third Way" of social-democracy, which means it is completely enveloped by the frame of neoliberalism.
Banks made a killing during 2002-2010, how would a communist be supportive of the finance industry?
It's shocking to me you are Brazilian and don't know this, it's shocking you parrot red-scare tactics as if Lula is about to start a Communist Revolution in Brazil. He isn't, he is not a communist.
I really apreciate the time you're taking to argue with this guy, but I must tell you that it is a lost battle (if you already know this, sorry). Here in Brazil, the red-scare tactics are the far right's bread and butter (like anywere on the world). So, judging by his response pattern so far, there is a high chance that he is a hardcore Bolsonaro supporter. While some can be reasoned with, most are cannot be. Well, at least other readers can see a couterpoint.
Lol, a "we're so high and mighty the other guy's a lost cause" response here on HN. Feels like I'm on Instagram.
Dude, you literally cannot refute the fact that Lula is a communist. His own words say so. His own actions say so. Don't bullshit me about "red-scare tactics" when you have exactly zero arguments. If you don't think these people being communists is a problem, you should educate yourself on the massive damage, misery and loss of life they caused in any country where they achieved power. I'd rather be ruled by literal nazis.
Also I couldn't care less about Bolsonaro. He's irrelevant now, forget about him. I criticized him a lot during his mandate, especially his needlessly inept handling of the pandemic but I do prefer him over literal communists any day. That about sums up my opinion of that guy.
"Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement"
> Lula is not a communist, he hasn't been since his first 2 terms between 2002-2010.
He is communist, because his political articulation and the structure assembled to stay in Power, is communist. Is his Doctrine Communism? He never read a book his whole Life, so I guess he has no clue about theory. His thing is money and power. Like any other communist.
Let's see... Relativization of private property, media censorship, taxes on accumulated capital, religious persecution. Wow, literally the same talking points that surfaced in last year's elections.
Yeah, you're seriously mistaken if you think this guy isn't a communist. And that article is from 2010, the media wasn't so friendly to him back then. Now that same media backs him and he also has supreme court judges backing his every move...
Let's just say I'm glad you were able to leave this place. I'm genuinely happy for you. I would have left too but my family refused to come with me and I didn't have the heart to leave them behind.
> Let's see... Relativization of private property, media censorship, taxes on accumulated capital, religious persecution.
This is red-scare rhetoric, not communism.
> Who cares?
Anyone trying to have a discussion/debate about ideologies, like what you are trying to do. Words have meaning, in a discussion this meaning matters. If you don't care, then you don't care for the discussion, you are just soapboxing.
It's not "rhetoric" at all, it's literally what he's doing. His strategy has always been to slowly install socialism small bits at a time so that nobody notices. Therefore it's obvious what his objective is when he starts saying you should have to "mediate" with someone who invades your private property instead of having access to the justice system or the right to use force. Why can't you see?
> Anyone trying to have a discussion/debate about ideologies
It's the 21st century, we don't "debate" communism anymore. I'm not at all interested in the academic difference between these terms. They're history. The whole problem is we got these fools trying to install this cancer in my country in the first place.
Why do you throw the word socialism about as if it is exactly the same as communism? The Nordic nations are socialist democracies and they’re regarded as some of the best run and happiest places on earth, with a business friendly environment that allows for entrepreneurs to take risks because they know there is a social safety net to fall back on if it doesn’t work out.
The left and right can be both right and wrong simultaneously. You’re meant to adapt policies for the contextual situation. In fact, this is the entire point of a democracy, to oscillate between opposing ideologies throughout time as the flaws of one become apparent to such an extent that the incumbent system starts showing weakness, disgruntling the populace to such an extent that they course correct the system by electing the opposing ideology.
> Why do you throw the word socialism about as if it is exactly the same as communism?
Because I don't respect them enough to even make the distinction. I feel bad even saying the words "communist" and "socialist". I really don't want to give any legitimacy to ideas that caused misery, famine, oppression, genocide every time they were put in practice anywhere. I want those ideas to literally fade from people's minds instead of being studied as if they were serious subjects.
I've had the privilege of reading posts written by citizens of formerly communist states here on HN. That's all the evidence I need. It's not pretty.
> The Nordic nations are socialist democracies and they’re regarded as some of the best run and happiest places on earth, with a business friendly environment that allows for entrepreneurs to take risks because they know there is a social safety net to fall back on if it doesn’t work out.
So what you're telling me is there's supposedly socialist nations in Europe right now that allow businesses to accumulate capital. Doesn't make any sense.
> So what you're telling me is there's supposedly socialist nations in Europe right now that allow businesses to accumulate capital. Doesn't make any sense.
Yes. You're welcome to put your HN contrarian hat on but that is the generally agreed upon consensus.
Left unchecked, free market capitalism turns into authoritarian feudalism which is pretty much what is happening around the world in Western nations right now. Left unchecked, socialism turns into communism and all the horrors that entails. Both are bad outcomes. When you are veering toward the extremes, you counter with policies from the opposing ideology. If not, you get a selfish, complacent and corrupt ruling class that ends up sliding into authoritarianism accompanied by "misery, famine, oppression and genocide" regardless of the ideological label you started out with.
It is a frequent occurrence for Conservative governments across the globe to temporarily nationalise companies and/or industries, often times for years, if the private sector have been found to run them into the ground. Case in point: the UK conservatives nationalised several banks in the financial crisis and recently nationalised a substantial amount (almost half) of the UK rail network. The stance you are subscribing to is an extreme one.
I doubt you have ever been to a Nordic country otherwise you would know they are some of the most free market capitalist nations on earth with strong social safety nets which has nothing in common with socialism or communism.
I don't believe you want to be enlightened by me. I suggest you try to live for a while in a country that calls itself a socialist country and then move for a while to a country which calls it self a free market capitalist country with strong social safety net. I can promise you we'll see the difference after doing this.
I lived in the UK from 1997 - 2010 when the Labour Party was in power. Guess what, the world didn't end. People were pretty happy. It was good times.
As I have said in previous comments, I believe that there should be a natural oscillation between socialist policies, which involve tax and nationalisation, and capitalist policies, which involve tax cuts and privatisation. Everything should be context dependent.
I think the UK is a bit of a sham democracy because of FPTP but we have historically had a pretty decent mixture of the capitalist and the socialist. In fact, people are pretty pissed off here right now, precisely because the socialist element (nhs, transport, education) has been eroded in quality so much by the encumbent capitalist element that they are no longer functioning properly. As a result it is highly likely the Labour Party will win the next general election.
If that were to happen, the world will not end and things will carry on as normal, just as it did in 1997. After a few terms pass, the ideological flaws of the Labour Party will manifest in their own problems, the populace will become angry with them and go on to re-elect the Conservative Party again. I will be happy when both of these things happen (the re-election of Labour and the re-election of the Conservative Party after that) because that is the natural way of things and means that the system is course correcting properly.
If you have lived in a more extreme country that does not have proper democratic protections and has had an authoritarian socialist government then I'm sorry you've had to experience that. But there is not much difference between that and the horrors of an authoritarian capitalist society such as the Arabian nations which used slave labour to build its football stadiums.
The problem is not the ideology. The ideology is simply a model that can be applied to a problem to see if it fits. The real problem is twofold. The first part being people who take ideologies to their extremes and refuse to compromise or adapt to context or, possibly even worse, those who don't care an iota about the ideology but will twist it (and anything else) for their own ends, abusing their positions simply for personal gain. The second part of the problem is weak political systems that do not have sufficient checks and balances to contain these zealots and/or self serving individuals.
>>If you have lived in a more extreme country that does not have proper democratic protections and has had an authoritarian socialist government then I'm sorry you've had to experience that.
I have and I kind of see where you coming from now. Because I would never use the word socialist for what you have in the UK, the word I would use is social. You make it sound socialist invented healthcare, transportation and education when all those things existed long before the first socialist was born. And yes ideology does matter a lot. There is a good reason why there wasn't a single successful socialist country in the world and there also a good reason why a lot of ex-socialist countries still have so many problems even after they nominally became capitalist. Value set and the ideology behind it really do matter.
> You make it sound socialist invented healthcare, transportation and education when all those things existed long before the first socialist was born.
The UK NHS was invented by the UK Labour Party (socialists) after WW2. It was the first healthcare system in the world that provided free healthcare services to its citizens on the basis of citizenship rather than fee payment or insurance. So yes, in a way, they did invent the modern health care system. Before it, working class people could not afford to see doctors because everything was private like the mess they have over in America. There is a reason the British people are very, very attached to the NHS.
Roads are another example. If all roads were private they would all have tolls and you would have to pay for every single one you used, including the minor ones from your house to the main road. Instead we pool our taxes and maintain them collectively because everyone can see that doing otherwise would be madness. But in a completely free market capitalist society with no opposing ideology, the landowners would happily charge you for each individual road, just as they happily charge you for parking a car.
And education only used to be available to those whose parents could afford it. Collectively we decided this was a bad idea, so we created a school system where every child would receive an education, paid for out of taxes. In a free market capitalist society, this would not exist, and half the country would be illiterate, having received no education because their parents could not afford it.
You can’t remove the “ist” from the end of “social” and claim it is a different thing. These are socialist policies, that are paid for by collect taxes and redistributing them to those in need. Most of us agree that these are for the greater good and preferable to the free market equivalent. But we can also agree that we don’t need to nationalise the production of cars, or clothes or any number of other things because the free market capitalist ideologies do a good job in those industries.
The problem is not the ideology. The problem is applying the wrong model (ideology) to the wrong problem due to being overly attached to the model as well as bad actors exploiting loopholes in models and systems for their own gain.
I prefer to look at these ideologies as percentages. I don’t know what the numbers would truly be but for the sake of example you could say that 70-80% of scenarios call for capitalist solutions and 20-30% of scenarios call for socialist solutions. In the UK this tracks, as we tend to have more/longer periods of Conservative government than we do Labour. It also tracks with the folk wisdom of sticking with what has been proven to work for the majority of the time rather than trying something new.
> and there also a good reason why a lot of ex-socialist countries still have so many problems even after they nominally became capitalist.
Yes, because they have not developed the checks and balances in their political systems to contain extremists and exploiters so they become corrupted. For example, this is one of the reasons why Ukraine was not allowed to join the EU. According to Wikipedia, it still needs to reform its system in the following areas:
Brussels Requirements
reform of the Constitutional Court
continuation of judicial reform
anti-corruption
anti-money laundering
implementation of the anti-oligarchic law
harmonization of audiovisual legislation
change in legislation on national minorities
For what it’s worth, I do think some of that is a bit hypocritical, especially as until very recently the UK was a member of the EU and London probably launders more dirty money than anywhere else on the planet but that’s another discussion in itself.
Words have meanings and socialism doesn't mean what you think it means and also free market capitalism doesn't mean what you are making it to be. You are trying to assign everything that is a about common good or state's good as socialist, which is absurd and completely ahistorical thing to say.
The roads example is so silly that just let me say the Romans already build roads around Britain and I wouldn't call them socialist.
Socialism is a political philosophy and movement encompassing a wide range of economic and social systems[1] which are characterised by social ownership of the means of production,[2][3][4] as opposed to private ownership.[5][6][4] As a term, it describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems.[7] Social ownership can be public, community, collective, cooperative,[8][9][10] or employee.[11][12] While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism,[13] social ownership is the one common element,[6][14] and is considered left-wing.
If the state owns the roads rather than an individual or company, and they are maintained via taxes rather than tolls, then that is a socialist system. It may be part of a wider system that is mainly capitalist (which it is) but that subset of the system follows socialist principles. You can’t get around it just because you don’t like it. You want to label everything black and white, good or bad, but the world doesn’t work that way.
Just follow through with your logic. Were Romans 2000 years ago socialist (Roman state build roads)? Were middle age European kings (they were the state) socialist for building roads? I mean did you read what you copy pasted from wikipedia, it doesn't support what you claim at all.
I wouldn't worry about the rain forest since. Not only it's likely too wet and hot for the new wheat cultivars, but AFAIK deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is driven mostly by cattle-ranching and land speculation.
I'd burn that entire jungle down if it brought us industry, development and prosperity in exchange. Why is it that only developed countries got to exploit their natural resources?
It happened 100-200 years ago in developed countries, we know better now that it isn't something to be replicated. Or are you also willing to have child labour working 12-16 hours/day to achieve industrialisation? Burning that entire jungle down to achieve short-term economical development will doom future generations, you achieve development and prosperity for 20 years while leaving a bleak future for the next 50-200 years. For what? Making some cars? Mining some ore?
It's the second moronic take I came across from you in this comment chain, you're parroting Bolsonaro's demagogy, it feels like you haven't thought yourself about the consequences of "burn that entire jungle down". I don't believe you are that stupid so please, give it a deeper thought than this knee-jerk angry reactionary take. It sounds extremely moronic.
Defense industry? Semiconductor fabs? Pretty much anything? You name it dude. I'm just sick of my country being the world's barn. Producing soy and shit. I wish Brazil had balls to do what China did.
> you're parroting Bolsonaro's demagogy
Please. I don't care at all about Bolsonaro. He's irrelevant. I had this opinion before he even took office.
It's not that I "haven't thought of the consequences", it's that I really don't give a shit. I literally couldn't care less that there's going to be a price -- I'd pay it gladly, if it brought prosperity and power to my nation.
> It's not that I "haven't thought of the consequences", it's that I really don't give a shit. I literally couldn't care less that there's going to be a price -- I'd pay it gladly, if it brought prosperity and power to my nation.
That's the whole issue: you aren't the one who is going to pay for it.
I'm originally from the same nation as you, that's exactly why I'm calling you moronic. Semiconductor fabs don't depend on the Amazon being burnt down. Defence industry does not depend on the Amazon being burnt down. These depend on political stability, well-educate population, State investment in R&D for the future, economical policies that foster national industries through the whole chain, fiscal policies (and stability of those) that don't overburden small R&D companies. Custo-Brasil encompasses all of that: political instability, fiscal policies that are burdensome to abide to, a poorly educated population, bureaucratic inefficiencies, so on and so forth.
That's what need to change in Brazil, not fucking burning the Amazon down, that won't bring any prosperity as the elites would be unchanged, they would still pillage and loot you and the rest of the population, as it's been done since the 1500s.
Never said those things depended on burning down the amazon. I said I'd totally sacrifice it if doing so paid off.
You're calling me a moron because you took my post literally. Truth is I don't even disagree with the rest of your points. The sentiment I tried to convey was "the amazon doesn't matter, we have bigger problems to worry about". That's the most polite way I found to express what I feel when I see people worrying about a jungle in a country that's unable to provide basic sanitation to all its citizens. Especially those living in said jungle, and there are many.
At least it's a relatively noble cause. I'm a lot less polite when it comes to intellectual property.
You got it reversed, developed countries have stopped to use their forest when they industrialized and start to use coal/oil instead of wood and when increase in food production make the use of less productive land unnecessary. Thinking you can be richer by destroying Amazonia is pure delusion.
> Thinking you can be richer by destroying Amazonia is pure delusion.
What? Literally any economical activity you can think of would be a better use for that massive amount of land. If you told me I could have a billion dollar fab built in my country but the only place I could build it was in the middle of the amazon, it wouldn't take me even one second to decide.
Did you know there's oil reserves in the amazon? People in the government keep making noises about that. Every once in a while I see news about some environmental drama concerning the extraction of petroleum in that region. I wish they'd just do it already.
Billion dollar fabs and oil rigs will create a ton of jobs and attract a lot of people to their surroundings. That means housing, local services to serve and sustain that population, local infrastructure paid for by increased tax revenue. The increased economic activity will attract more capital and start a self-sustaining cycle that will develop and improve vast areas. Everyone will want to be there to get a piece of that prosperity.
I know because I literally live in a city where this happened. Steel industry. When my parents came here, it pretty much was a jungle. Now they call it the Steel Valley.
Yeah, enjoy your life under the de facto rule of greater nations who could sanction you to oblivion and take everything you have by force any second they wanted because you have a joke military that's only good for painting roads in peace time. Worked great for the original inhabitants of Brazil when the portuguese came in 1500, now they depend on communists for property rights.
you've the same kind of talk and hate than some African with colonialism
Personally I don't give a damn about nations, I care about the planet as a whole, I live in France but nowhere like the average, more like a third-world person (I don't even have a fridge, not hot water, nor heating or AC, just to give you an idea), so your talk doesn't make sense to me
You may not care but I do. I would very much enjoy seeing Brazil become a powerful country.
If I hate anything it's the weakness of our governors who are perfectly happy in their positions as globalist puppets. They are always seeking the next great power so they can align themselves with them. Once upon a time that was the United States. Now it looks like it's China. Wish they had the balls to aspire to be the next great power instead.
They claim the current wheat yield is 3.3 tons/hectare while the new variety has yield 10 tons/hectare, about a 3x difference.
What impact does this have on the micronutrient profile of the harvested crop? And does this result in faster depletion of those micronutrients from the soil, i.e. is it sustainable to harvest this crop?
Yields of most plants are higher in the tropics: there is more sunlight, more water, and no frost. Wheat, historically, hasn't been able to benefit from this as it wasn't adapted to the climate.
Most minor minerals are present in plants to the tune of 0.001% by weight or less. We extract many times as much manganese, chromium, copper etc as the metal as we would from the soil. Selenium is generally postulated as the limiting element for life on Earth, but we're not yet at the point of needing to supplement it in soil. Brazil nuts are supposedly a particularly Se-avid crop, yet they haven't destroyed the ecosystem of Brazil so far.
Soil depletion more generally consists of changes in texture (less water holding) and reduced ability to slow-release the nutrients we already add (NPK). It has been addressed by adding clays — chiefly aluminosilicates — which are predominantly composed of elements not utilized by living things (mostly). In other words, it's usually not the nutrients themselves being removed from a "depleted" soil, at least in the modern day.
Brazilian soils are phosphate poor. I believe that's typical of tropical soils. So they have a mineral bottleneck, that can't be solved by pumping energy into the supply chain.
Of course it’s not sustainable. No modern farming is.
They’ve probably come up with some stupid technique like diverting the entire amazon river in order to pull this off. And then a few years down the line they’ll be asking where all the water went and why the forest is gone.
In the 80's, Embrapa (same research agency) discovered a way to grow Soy in the Midwest/cerrado... And that's how today Brazil is the largest soy exporter in the world.
Before the 80's, soy was only grown in the South of Brazil (and Brazil imported soy at the time as I recall).
Currently, wheat is also only grown in the South as well.
Now, things are not simple. The wheat prices will need to be competitive to make farmers plant wheat instead of only soy. Soy currently totally dominates Brazilian farming. Everywhere you look you only see soy.
PS: Embrapa is also developing several varieties of grapes for Cerrado/Midwest region. Currently it's basically only grown in the South as well.
Anyone familiar with the governmental policies of Brazil? They mentioned deforestation twice to say that it's not a problem because this will be done on existing farmland. But, how long that will hold when there's money to be made?
Since, according to the article, wheat should be planted on already existing crops, I don't think it will be a big issue in the near future. However, soybeans are already a major cause of deforestation, especially in the Midwest, and this extra productivity may boost these activities.
I'm not an expert, but working with multiple crops in the same year can also further deplete soil resources, decreasing the overall productivity and increasing deforestation.
Brazilian politics is extremely messy right now, and it's hard to tell how we're going to face environmental issues in the near future. The recently-elected president has a strong environmentalist agenda, but is fighting with the Congress and may lose support for pushing forward such legislation.
> They mentioned deforestation twice to say that it's not a problem because this will be done on existing farmland.
I'm skeptical of this reasoning. Wheat may be planted on existing farmland. But then where will the previous crops on that farmland be planted? If one changes a bean farm to a wheat farm, but then somebody else slashes and burn Amazon Forest or Pantanal to plant the displaced beans, then we have a net loss.
> But then where will the previous crops on that farmland be planted?
From the article:
In the cerrado, wheat is planted from March to June. Soybeans and corn are the main crops from October to February. So, tropical wheat represents an extra source of income for the farmer.
If Bolsonaro were still in charge I'd be concerned but Lula is an advocate of indigenous communities so I'm not as worried. There is still plenty of corruption and schemers who will poach land but they won't have a bright green light like they would have before Lula was elected.
Source? Sibling comment has an article that says the opposite. And anyway, the Amazon is huge so land poachers are hard to detect and catch in real time. It's much more likely that poachers feel a time crunch that wasn't as tight under Bolsonaro since he gave them free rein.
Faacinating. You've linked to an article that shows Lula is acting in accordance with Indigenous demands, and that the Senate is the one limiting their land rights. But then you say Lula is the problem. Sounds like unfounded scapegoating to me.
I guess you know nothing about Politics, specially in South America, so i will translate it to you. Lula knows the senate, he knows that there is no way this would be approved, but doing as he did, people like you would believe he wanted to change anything. He has other instruments to change it, if he really wanted. This is simply virtue signaling.
"Still during a trip to the G-7, in Japan, Lula had already signaled that he could contradict Marina regarding Ibama's refusal to grant a license for Petrobras to drill oil deposits at the mouth of the Amazon River. The project put the head of the Environment on a collision course with the Minister of Mines and Energy, Alexandre Silveira , as shown by Estadão"
> Every single one of the links you post directly contradict your given summaries. You're lying and you're not even very good at it.
Again, is common in Politics, knowing that a propose has now change to be approved, politician A or B submit it to be voted, just for Virtue Signaling. Lula as president, has other instruments, to make it happens, other than going through the senate. Was the same thing with the oil drilling in Amazonas, shortly blocked by technicians and not by politicians. As you can see in the article, Lula was pro-drilling, but now he just stepped down from the discussion, because he saw that it could be bad for his image.
This is a massive development for the world, not just Brazil. Tropical wheat would fix the constant food insecurity issues in all the tropical countries in the world.
Peter Zeihan has a lot of interesting POVs. I'm half way through his first book 'The Accidental Superpower' and he makes convincing arguments all around so far.
So we have a free hectare and we want to produce food. We decide to culture wheat in that space.
Our wheat would reach around 1m high, thus our "food 3D printer" has a volume of 100 x 100 x 1m. We could obtain 2 to 7 tons of wheat in that space
With corn our production space is 100 x 100 x 2 m and we can obtain on average 5 tons of corn (but we could obtain 7-10 tons with some extra effort).
With avocados our production volume is 100 x 100 x 25 m. We could obtain between 7 and 13 tons of Has avocados, but with a good culture practices, good rootstocks and smart planning we could produce 23 tons
With Oranges we could harvest also 10 - 22 tons of oranges
And bananas would yield 50-60 tons of food... on average
So If our goal is to feed as many people as possible, what should we culture, trees or herbs?
This is incredible news to read. I am now even more optimistic about the future considering this and the progress in renewables (in market) and fusion (in meaningful achievement) over the last 15 years.
This is great but I think they'll burn down the Amazonian forests to turn them into dipe ground for intensive agriculture. We are too dependant on grain. We should probably learn from the Koreans and Japanese, diversify and do more algae farming?
Wheat prices fluctuate according to USD/BRL rates and this is one of the reasons Brazilian inflation gets significantly affected by exchange rates -- which is expected, considering how many basic products, like bread, depend on wheat. The prices will still fluctuate like you said, but a local production can give the country some autonomy to design policies and attenuate the impact.
> Russian gas, which has caused widespread misery in Europe.
I agree with you cynicism about the free market, but the situation with Russian gas turned out way better than was feared. Party this was due to a mild winter but the forecasts were very grim for a while there.
They are responding to a factual statement: "... caused widespread misery in Europe".
I live in Europe and have to laugh at that. The misery they're talking about is a 2x increase in the electric bill, which some of the richer governments (e.g. Sweden) paid back to most consumers (I got two paybacks so far, making my electric bill for the year about the same as the year before, I would say). If they think this is "misery", I think the commenter has absolutely never seen anything even close to real misery.
self sufficiency in food is pretty much the most fundamental basis of political autonomy for any nation. It's honestly harder to imagine a 'real metric'
Guarulhos and Galeão are international airports in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro respectively.
"The only solution to the Brazilian problems is [leaving through] the airport" is a common trope among disatisfied, angry and fed up Brazilians (and I bet every other problematic country).
Fossil fuels: Currently, Brazil is self-sufficient in oil, but we export petrol to buy back refined fuels (gasoline and diesel). If we were self-sufficient in fossil fuels we would be much more immune to inflation every time OPEC decides to reduce oil output.
Wheat: We are the top of the world exporting foods. We produce 6x our current need. Nevertheless, we still need imported wheat. Ukraine war and dollar variations literary affect our bread.
Fertilizers: The largest world food producer needs imported fertilizers. The irony: our main supplier is Russia. This basically prevents Brazil taking any side in the conflict and affects our (and our buyers) food prices as much as wheat.
Achieving self-sufficiency in these three areas would be like a second independence for us (first was when we got free from Portugal).