There was a virus in the middle of the way

Everything is fine with the field in the 2019/2020 harvest to break the historic record in grain harvest and exceed 248 million tons. A number that was unthinkable in my youth, in the 1980s, when the agricultural target was to exceed 100 million tons.

We grew dramatically in the last decade and made a huge leap in planted area and productivity.

It was no different with the meat complex either. We are the largest suppliers of the global red meat market and are among the top two in chicken and pork.

Our numbers are impressive and demonstrate our competitiveness from the inside out. Apart from the problems of our precarious infrastructure, where we have everything to do, our agribusiness continues to prove its vigor.

Everything is going well, thank you, but no one expected a virus outbreak along the way, with the characteristics of a global pandemic.

It is still too early to measure the damage and macroeconomic impacts in the world and here in our village. In recent days, international stock exchanges have hiccuped and companies that work with commodities have seen their market values ​​plummet.

Effect that can be reversed, if the Coronavirus scenario begins to reverse in the coming weeks. Mainly, if the Chinese quarantine is successful and medicine quickly evolves into a solution with vaccines capable of immunizing against the lethal flu.

The question that remains is whether we will be able to carry out the pre-negotiated volumes that would be sold this year with China and other countries heading east: Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, among others.

If these customers do not confirm their orders, due to any regulatory restriction, such as the closure of ports in China, things could get ugly for exporting countries dependent on Asian markets, such as Brazil, Argentina and even the United States.

Remembering that the restrictions may not be of an authoritarian nature, in an imposing and martial country, but also a market one, with a natural drop in demand, with fewer people buying, with closed markets and low circulation of goods.

China has 1,4 billion mouths to feed. It needs food from almost every part of the world. That's why they culturally feed on bats and other animals that are exotic to us in the West.

Hopefully, the extreme negative doesn't happen and this flu turns into just a severe global cold. After all, we are heading towards a year of growth in the range of 2,5% of GDP. A breath of oxygen for our struggling economy, which so badly needs confirmation of this growth to generate jobs.

But along the way we still have a virus that could disrupt our meager plans.

Health to the Earth, our home in this universe without a gate!