2021 A Year of Great Challenges and With Great Results, For Brazilian Agribusiness and Especially For Those Who Knew How to ″Influence the Influencers″

Date:08-19-2022

As the famous American series, THIS IS US, which is in its final chapters, says: ″If life gives you lemons, make an amazing lemonade″, Brazilian agribusiness in 2021 did just that.

We had everything to have a difficult year with great difficulties: Covid at its highest peaks, the dollar with immense volatility, droughts, frosts, excessive rainfall, etc. made the Brazilian farmer fear the year 2021 like no other.

Fertilizers doubled in price and significantly increased production costs in agribusiness. According to the Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil (CNA), the average total cost of a soybean crop went from R$4,260 per hectare in February 2021 to R$6,300 in November of the same year. . In the same period, the projected cost of fertilizers rose 95%, and production margins were 42% lower, as estimated by the Department of Rural Economy of Paraná (Deral).

All these increases were caused by logistical, political, and energy issues that continue to influence the global crop input market in 2022.

But from this incredible lemon that life gave us, Brazilian agribusiness emerged unscathed, thanks to a minister of agriculture who put her ″hands-on″ and decided to act, and to a government that believed and bet on agribusiness as a sector that could help in our recovery, Brazil came out much stronger and agribusiness emerged even more as our most competitive sector.

A record grain harvest is expected for 2022, at least this is the expectation shared by the National Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA), which predicts production of 289 million tons, 14% more than the 2021/22 harvest.

We opened new markets, we knew how to negotiate phytosanitary barriers, overcome the problems of lockdown, high freight, and input prices.

The Brazilian farmer, thanks to the technical knowledge through the substitution of some inputs, in the search for more productive and adapted cultivars, and for the inherent resilience, managed to deliver not only to the Brazilian but to the rest of the world, food in quantity and in quality that eased the greatest possible crisis in all of history.

Disturbances such as inflation, hunger, and social upheaval, which if not avoided, were certainly mitigated.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Brazilian agribusiness, estimated by the Center for Advanced Studies in Applied Economics (CEPEA) in partnership with the CNA (Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil), grew 8.36% in 2021. in 2021, it reached a share of 27.4% of the Brazilian GDP, the highest since 2004 (when it was 27.53%). The segments of production and crop inputs stood out, with increases of 17.52% and 52.63%, respectively.

All this fantastic GDP comes from approximately 6.4 million properties that plant approximately 68 million hectares in agriculture (Soybean, Corn, HFF, Rice, Coffee etc.) corresponding to only 8% of the total Brazilian territory and approximately 178 million hectares in pastures and another 10 million hectares with planted forests.

It is incredible that in just 30% of our territory, we manage to feed 1 out of 4 people worldwide with (Food, Fiber, Meat, Energy, etc... ) and we preserve more than 65% of our territory, showing the world that our agriculture is productive and sustainable, contrary to what many would like to classify us.

For the Crop Protection sector, we had an increase of 17%, going from a market of R$62 billion in 2020 to R$73 billion in 2021, (US$1/R$5), according to my estimates and that of (Nirus SA). The same happened for all other segments such as Seeds, Fertilizers, and Specialties, growing more than double digits in revenues and profitability.

But more than sticking to these numbers, it is to see the impact that the agribusiness ″community″ has on this growth. Today I say that the biggest problem of Brazilian agribusiness is to communicate only with those who are part of this universe. We are knowing very well to communicate with our community, and LinkedIn is showing us as I will show Bellow.

Investing in the knowledge of professionals, networking, and sharing makes the bar go up more and more. Companies that understood this action had been performing better than their competitors in 2021.

Brazil currently has approximately 500,000 farmers who make up 95% of the crop input market in Brazil. See the table below of how they are distributed according to a study by Multcom (https://www.grupomultcom.com.br/), one of the companies that most know about market access strategy in Brazilian agribusiness.

Considering that the crop protection market in 2021 was approximately R$ 73 billion reais, we have that 27% of this market was accessed directly, that is, from the agronomists of the industry face to face with the almost 3000 groups/farmers. Another considerable portion of 26% were served by agronomists of cooperatives and 47% through distributors and re-distributors. Similar numbers also occurred in other segments such as Fertilizers, seeds, and specialties.

It is not difficult to imagine that in a market so big in size, but so small in terms of the number of farmers, the strength of influencers (Agronomists, Veterinarians, Zootechnicians, etc...) is fundamental to the success of the entire business.

According to Confea - Federal Council of Engineering and Agronomy, there are more than 105,293 agronomists in Brazil, and almost 10,000 agronomists leave the country's 534 universities every year. These professionals, along with zootechnicians, veterinarians, agricultural technicians, and others, help Brazilian farmers and ranchers to place the country at the forefront of global agribusiness.

It is natural for me that a large part of this audience stands on Linkedin, a social network that was founded in 2002 and has 50 million users in Brazil, and which grows at an average of 14% per year.

Brazil is the fourth community in the network, behind the United States, India, and China. This social network in my opinion is the best for networking, developing leads and business, and also in the search for information.

To highlight this, I wanted to show an interesting comparison between the growth of sales and market share of crop protection companies in Brazil, compared to the actual number and growth of followers of companies on this social network.

Most of these companies have global operations and the generation of content is sometimes a little out of step with the day-to-day of Brazilian agro influencers.

"Digital technology and access to social media have allowed each present on social networks to be an influencer and content generator". Having a strategy to know how to communicate and interact with this audience, in addition to bringing more followers, reflects on how they reach our farmer, rancher, or agribusiness lover.

The relationship with these influencers is key, and today, the technology allows us to improve these new ways of interacting with this audience. Knowing the farmer, his habits, and who influences them is a central point for success, and the success of some companies in the field and the networks showed a little of this for us in 2021.

Note that almost, without exception, the companies that have greater market share have more followers on the network. Knowing how this interaction is taking place can be a great clue for those who want to be more successful in the segments.

We all know that there is a very positive correlation between NPS (Net Promoter Score) and market share, but this chart shows to me the incredible correlation between having a positive network of influencers and the success of your business. Knowing how to measure and control can be important points of any company's strategy.

All this growth in Brazilian agribusiness was based on technical knowledge, co-creation, and collaboration. Interacting with these influencers has gone from being results meetings to a clear proposition of making things happen together.

Think about it.

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This article was initially published in AgroPages' '2022 Latin America Focus' magazine.