Brazil Eyes Wheat in the Heat to Tackle Ukraine Grain Shortage

With higher prices attracting farmers, analysts are predicting as much as a 40% increase in national wheat production to almost 11 million tons this year.

“Brazil has everything it needs to become one of the world’s biggest producers,” said Celso Moretti, an agronomist and head of Embrapa, Brazil’s agricultural research agency. Currently a net importer of wheat, Brazil has the capacity today to triple wheat production to 22 million tons on existing farmland in the next few years, turning the country into one of the world’s 10 largest exporters, he said.

While the effort to grow these new varieties started before the invasion of Ukraine in late February, the timing couldn’t be better. With almost 50 countries dependent on Russia and Ukraine for at least 30% of their wheat imports, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warns disruptions caused by the war could lead to widespread hunger in the poorest nations.

Certainly, Brazil won’t be able to fill that gap in the short-term, since volumes are still small. But farmers are already starting to change that.

Paulo Bonato, one of the savanna’s traditional wheat farmers, shot to agricultural fame late last year after producing almost 81 kilos of wheat per hectare a day here—a new world record, according to Embrapa.

“There is so much potential here that we haven’t yet explored,” he said.

Embrapa had already become a global leader for other developing countries after adapting everything from tomatoes to goats to the tropics. But success in cultivating tropical wheat is a game-changer, analysts say, allowing vast swaths of central and northern Brazil to produce one of the most important grains for human consumption. Previously, the crop only prospered in the cooler southern tip of the country.

Over the past few decades, Embrapa has used technological advances to develop more hardy crop varieties and improve nutrient-poor soil. That has transformed Brazil from a net food importer into a farming powerhouse. Brazil now produces 10% of the planet’s food, ranking as the largest exporter of soybeans, beef, sugar, coffee and orange juice.

Wheat remains the last frontier—the only major commodity in which Brazil isn’t yet self-sufficient. With the crop more suited to temperate climates, Brazil has long relied on wheat from cooler, neighboring Argentina to keep it stocked up on bread, pasta and biscuits. Last year, Brazil imported about 40% of the 12 million tons it consumed, said Mr. Moretti.

Before the war broke out in Europe, Embrapa had been trying to change that, spooked by recent droughts, export restrictions and other problems in Argentina that disrupted imports. It was also a matter of pride, farmers said. After battling to become one of the world’s most important breadbaskets, Brazil still couldn’t make its own bread.

Embrapa, created during Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1973 to ensure food security in the country, has been working for decades to adapt wheat to the heat, in 2005 launching the most successful variety to date, BRS 264. As well as being able to withstand high temperatures, BRS 264 also has a high protein content of up to 15%, making it a high-quality wheat for breadmaking. Embrapa has also tried to persuade farmers of the benefits to other crops such as beans when rotated with wheat.

In recent years, countries in West Africa have also followed suit with small-scale projects to develop tropical wheat. In 2017, scientists in Senegal and Mauritania developed wheat that can withstand temperatures above 99 Fahrenheit, growing it during the tropical winter at experimental farms along the Senegal River in partnership with Swedish researchers.

The efforts come as major producers of the grain such as the U.S., which produced about 50 million tons last year, struggle with poor weather conditions. That has raised doubts over their ability to plug the gap in global supply.

In Brazil, getting farmers to move from reliable crops such as beans and invest in wheat harvesting hasn’t been easy—that is, until the Ukraine conflict sent global wheat prices to a 14-year high.

As the war has dragged on, raising the prospect of long-term wheat shortages, there has been a frenzy over the crop in regions such as this one in central Brazil ahead of the main wheat-planting season in early May.

“There is an interest in wheat that I’ve never seen before,” said Mr. Bonato, 62 years old, the world-record holder, whose largest 4,200-acre farm lies near the town of Cristalina in Goiás state. Everywhere he goes—from the local farming cooperative to the machine parts store—producers now stop him to discuss the modern farming technology he uses. Others call him up at home, trying to discover how to replicate his success.

The war is also hampering fertilizer imports from Russia, raising production costs for farmers. But many are betting on the windfall from wheat to “save the harvest,” said analysts at the Brazilian investment bank Itaú BBA.

Mr. Bonato said neither he nor his gluten-intolerant wife set out for fame. He’s more comfortable spending time with his crops, he said, and didn’t even know he had broken the world record until Embrapa called to inform him last year.

Like many of Brazil’s farmers, Mr. Bonato uses the latest technology, he said, calling up an app on his cellphone that tracks soil humidity in real time via probes inserted into the deep orange earth.

But other tips are harder to share, such as his obsession for wheat, nourished by fond memories of grinding the floury grains between his teeth as a small child while on harvests with his father in their home state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil’s cooler far south.

In the 1970s, Brazil’s government encouraged many of the top farming families from Rio Grande do Sul to move to the seemingly hostile acidic and dry lands of the central savanna. Descendants of Italians who had immigrated to Brazil over the previous century to farm, they had been pasta lovers with a cultural appreciation for the wheat they had been growing, Mr. Bonato said.

“People around here joke that I talk to my plants,” he said. “But I think of it like being a doctor. A good doctor knows that something is up with his patient just by looking at them.” When he can’t figure out what is causing some new mark on his plants’ leaves, Embrapa sends over technicians to investigate.

While Rio Grande do Sul and other southern states account for the vast majority of national production, the savanna in the country’s center has the potential to rapidly multiply the amount Brazil can harvest.

With irrigation and measures to correct the soil, such as the addition of lime and fertilizers, wheat grows rapidly here in the intense sunshine, cutting the time from planting to harvesting to as little as 110 days, just a third of what it takes in, say, New Zealand. Clear skies during harvesting also lower the risk from fungi that can plague wheat in the rainy south.

Higher production in central Brazil would help meet domestic consumption needs, freeing up more wheat for export from Rio Grande do Sul.

“We’re helping to feed more people,“ said Mr. Bonato. ”After all, what’s more important than bread?”