Farmer-turned-policitian Blairo Maggi, from the powerhouse agricultural state of Mato Grosso, is the new agriculture minister of Brazil under interim President Michel Temer. Maggi is expected to be a strong voice for the farm sector in one of the world’s largest producers and exporters, said Reuters.
Analysts view Maggi, a veteran of the Brazllian Senate, as having “enough gravitas to make sure Temer’s cabinet gives the farm sector a fair shake even as the ministries of finance, foreign relations and the environment address Brazil’s severe economic crisis,” said the news agency.
Since election to the Senate in 2011, Maggi has worked on streamlining the bureaucracy, which is blamed for sapping farm-sector productivity. He also is interested in modernizing agriculture in a country that already is the world leader in exports of soybeans, coffee, sugar, poultry, beef and orange juice, said Reuters. Environmentalists say Maggi had a role in converting forestland into farm fields. Maggi denied violating environmental laws.
In his heyday as operator of a mammoth farming operation, Maggi had renown among U.S. farmers for Paul Bunyan-esque achievements on the modern-day frontier of Brazil, turning vast tracts of land into fields that covered hundreds of acres and helping mold the road and river system to transport the harvests to Atlantic ports 2,000 miles to the east. Mato Grosso “is one of the remaining great frontier regions of the world,” says the Encyclopedia Britannica. “Only in the second half of the 20th century did highways and airplanes begin to offer more widespread communications.”