|
 About 20 million reais (US$ 12.7 million) and the participation of fruit farmers from the whole of Brazil, businessmen in the input sector and buyers from Brazil and countries like Germany, France and the Netherlands guaranteed the success of business roundtables at Brazil's International Irrigated Agriculture Fair (Fenagri 2008).
The event took place in the city of Petrolina, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, on July 24.
Sponsored by the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae) with the intent of bringing closer producers and buyers to establish trade agreements and exchange of information and technologies, the meeting brought to the São Francisco River Valley 25 international buyers, as well as representatives of Brazil's largest supermarket chain.
To the executive manager of the Brazilian Fruit Institute (Ibraf), Valeska de Oliveira, the business roundtables were extremely positive. "Foreign buyers who came from France and Germany were greatly impressed with the quality of the fruit and the figures of local production. Apart from that, we also brought 10 fruit producers from São Paulo who could make an exchange of information and close deals for the whole of the year with several supermarket chains present at the event."
Flávio de Carvalho, the representatives of G. Barbosa, the fourth largest supermarket chain in Brazil, with 42 shops in the northeastern Brazilian states of Sergipe, Bahia and Alagoas, participated in 15 meetings with producers during the whole of the day and also made a positive analysis.
"This is the first time that I participate in the Fenagri, but I had already traded fruit from the Valley. The perspective after these roundtables is for our purchases of fruit to rise around 35%, with the acquisition of eight tons a month of grapes, three tons a month of mangoes and one ton a month of guava," stated the businessman, who discussed annual and renewable contracts.
One of the fruit producers who negotiated with G.Barbosa, Antonio Rosa da Silva Neto, the chairman of the Mango Chamber at the Association of Rural Farmers of the 06-Aprn-06 Nucleus (Nilo Coelho Project, in Petrolina), also participated in six other business roundtables. He is confident regarding the future trade of 200 tons of mango, as he already has market for another 300 tons due to certification by the Fair Trade Market.
Antonio Neto also approved the format of the business roundtables. "The buyers asked for information about production, trading period, price and forms of payment. Our 36 associates will most probably soon be selling mangos to bands like Zerres and Co, in Germany, and Desmetre, in France."
To the Sebrae Sertão do São Francisco Business Unit coordinator, Maria Cândida Moreira, the business roundtables, which were coordinated by J&B Consultores, should also allow for the inclusion of the name of producers and buyers in the catalogue of opportunities, a mechanism for business prospecting that is available all year round for the follow through of contacts made.
"We also made a positive evaluation of the roundtables due to the great participation of small producers from associations and cooperatives in the Valley. The Sebrae is also present in the Fenagri through a series of talks that are offered for free at our stand, certainly a meeting point and support for the generation of business and opportunities," she finished off.
Sebrae
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.