His trip is postponed sine die due to pneumonia. Brazilian President Lula was due to visit Beijing. The Brazilian delegation is maintained. It has about a hundred players in the trade of agricultural products. They are looking for new opportunities in Brazil’s leading trading partner.
This state visit by Lula, which provided for a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, has been postponed, but it was preceded by that of his Minister of Agriculture, Carlos Favaro who, since Wednesday March 22, has been leading on place discussions in order to prepare the ground.
Trade in agricultural products at its zenith
It is indeed the whole of Brazilian agribusiness that is going on the offensive. Last year, China bought nearly a third of Brazil’s agricultural exports. Six out of ten of Brazil’s most exported agricultural products are consumed in China, particularly beef. The local demand for beef is increasing and national production cannot fully satisfy it.
The figures are dizzying: more than a million tons of beef, more than half a million chicken, but above all more than 53 million tons of Brazilian soybeans were exported from Brazil to the Asian giant in 2022.
It is also to sell products with higher added value that the head of the powerful Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries is on the trip. Also represented within the Brazilian delegation, the National Animal Protein Association, which would like to build more meat processing plants and more warehouses on Chinese soil to facilitate deliveries.
Beef embargo lifted
The two countries have yet to agree on a sanitary and phytosanitary protocol. But the tone has been set: the embargo on Brazilian beef, imposed a month ago due to an “atypical” case of mad cow discovered in the northern state of Para, has just been lifted by the China.
Another subject under discussion: the creation of a bilateral fund that would finance the development of green technologies and renewable energies in the two countries. According to the Brazilian Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva, this fund could be used for reforestation and the development of the sustainable economy, but also for the production of green hydrogen, the production of which generates very few carbon emissions. greenhouse gas.
Green hydrogen is the subject of a new global craze. But it currently represents only 2% of world production, because its production costs are still very high.
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