Milho: família unida produz 30% a mais por hectare

The patriarch left Mato Grosso for Paraná in the 1970s, pursuing his dream of large-scale food production. Talking about Luiz Anisio Bortoluzzi's story is like taking a look back at Brazilian agribusiness over the past four decades. He arrived in the Brazilian Cerrado in 1976, during a difficult time for farmers migrating from the South. He left a stable job in public service to pursue a dream he'd harbored since childhood in Paraná, when his parents were family farmers. "I dreamed of one day owning 500 hectares to produce food on a large scale. When the Cerrado began to be cleared, I thought it was time to take the plunge. I left Paraná in a Volkswagen Beetle for Mato Grosso," he says. Forty-two years later, Luiz Anisio, along with his three sons, who became agricultural engineers, break productivity records with each corn harvest. The family has two properties, one in Campos de Júlio, Mato Grosso do Sul, and the other in São Gabriel do Oeste, Mato Grosso do Sul. We visited the latter during the soybean harvest and the planting of the second corn crop. The youngest son, Ricardo Bortoluzzi, responsible for managing the new technologies available in the fields, says that choosing the right hybrids is crucial for positive crop results. "Our average went from 105 bags per hectare to 125 bags and finally 148 bags per hectare," he notes. Another factor highlighted as crucial is the area of ​​the farm used for research. Some companies in the sector use plots to test new hybrids. CORN The Bortoluzzis began growing corn in 1994, abandoned the crop after a few years, and only later returned to producing the grain. Two reasons explain this return: corn became more profitable and also gained a previously unused market. "With earlier soybean cultivars, it was possible to bring forward corn planting. The window now makes this possible. The second crop ended up becoming the second crop, paying off for rural producers in the Cerrado," says Luiz Anisio Bortoluzzi, the pioneer who helped shape the history of Brazilian agriculture.