Drew Crawford
@drewcrawford_ • 18,735 subscribers
American in Brazil. Capital for what Brazil produces. Agribusiness, critical minerals, export infrastructure. Fluent in Portuguese. Book & daily analysis ↓
Videos
Brazil grows more than half its grain on land that scientists said would never farm. The Cerrado is a savanna covering a quarter of the country, and its soil is naturally acidic, with a pH between 4 and 5 when most crops want 5.5 to 6.5. That acidity releases aluminum, which is poison to roots. It also locks up phosphorus, so the little that is there cannot be used. Some Cerrado soils held under 1 milligram of usable phosphorus per kilo. Norman Borlaug, the man who won a Nobel Prize for feeding the world, told the New York Times that nobody thought those soils would ever be productive. Brazil did not go find better land. It rebuilt the land it had. Embrapa worked out that lime neutralizes the aluminum, and farmers started spreading it by the millions of tonnes. Brazil applied 11.5 million tonnes of agricultural lime in 1990 and 61.6 million in 2023. Then came gypsum, which sinks deeper and fixes the soil 20 to 60 centimeters down, where lime cannot reach. Roots that used to stop short could suddenly go looking for water. Fifty years later that same savanna produces more than half of Brazil's grain. Two thirds of the country's farmland still needs that treatment to work at all. The dirt did not change on its own. Somebody engineered it.
Drew Crawford247,192 Aufrufe • vor 17 Tagen
Brazil just signed 15 deals with Spain in a single afternoon. The agreements cover critical minerals, satellites, and AI infrastructure built to last decades. Spain is one of the top three foreign investors in Brazil and still needed this more than Lula did. Brazil holds the world's second largest rare earth reserves on the planet. Every electric vehicle, missile, and smartphone runs on materials Brazil sits on top of. The U.S., EU, India, and China are all circling the same country right now. Brazil's new rule: you can access our minerals, but you process them inside Brazil or the deal dies. That one condition is how a raw materials exporter becomes an industrial power. Brazil has not signed with Washington yet and is using every other deal as leverage before that moment comes. The country the world called "the country of the future" for 85 years just started collecting on that debt.
Drew Crawford210,460 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
Most U.S. money managers own less than 1% of Brazil. That number will look crazy in 10 years. Brazil has more farmable land than any country on Earth. It holds 12% of the world's fresh water. 87% of its power comes from clean sources, the cleanest grid of any major economy. One Brazilian company in Minas Gerais, called CBMM, makes more than 80% of the world's niobium. Niobium is the metal jet engines, oil pipelines, and the next wave of EV batteries cannot work without. Brazil sits on 30 to 40 billion barrels of pre-salt oil under the Atlantic. That oil ships out through open water, far from every place a hostile country could close. Two governors, a room full of allocators, and 10 minutes to make the case U.S. capital still misses. Brazil Week 2026, Harvard Club. Three reasons keep the money out. 1. Wall Street watches Brazil's elections and ignores its soil, water, energy, minerals, and carbon. 2. China controls the refining of the world's most important minerals. Brazil holds the reserves. Most serious investors stop reading after the first sentence. 3. Owning the Bovespa index leaves out where the real money lives, in family-owned factories across Southern Brazil and farmland across MATOPIBA.
Drew Crawford148,663 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
Os buffets brasileiros continuam imbatíveis. Comida à vontade por 73 reais (~$14 USD) 📍Goiás 🇧🇷
Drew Crawford32,180 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Brazil sits on a metal that the modern world cannot run without. This ad from 1988 made a promise about it that sounds impossible. Brazil will not run out of niobium until the year 2700. The company that ran the ad is CBMM, based in a small town called Araxá. They were not bluffing. Eight years later, in 1996, the man in this video was warning his whole country about the same metal. His name was Dr. Enéas Carneiro. He spent his airtime on national TV saying almost all of the world's niobium sits under Brazilian soil. His famous line was that Brazil sold this metal to other nations "for the price of a banana." People treated him like a clown. He was right. Niobium is the reason much of modern life holds together. You add a tiny bit to steel (around 0.05%) and that steel becomes about 30% stronger. That stronger steel builds pipelines, bridges, car frames, and jet engines. The metal also goes into rocket nozzles and the magnets inside MRI machines. There is no good replacement for it. And Brazil controls the supply. The country produces close to 90% of all the niobium on Earth. Europe now buys about 92% of its niobium from Brazil alone. CBMM makes most of the world's supply by itself. The largest economies saw the risk and moved fast. In 2011, steel giants from China, Japan, and South Korea paid around 3.9 billion dollars for just 30% of CBMM. The United States and Europe were left out of that deal. So the 1988 ad told the truth. The supply really will last for centuries. And the man warning everyone in 1996 told the truth too. Brazil quietly controls one of the most important metals of this century, and the capital that understands this early tends to act before the headlines do. Most still have not noticed.
Drew Crawford13,984 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Last night in New York, three men shared a stage. What they represent will shape U.S.-Brazil relations more than any treaty between our two countries. Wesley Batista, chairman of JBS, the largest protein company on earth. André Esteves, founder of BTG Pactual, the largest investment bank in Latin America. Donald Trump Jr. JBS has a complicated history. In 2017, JBS executives admitted under plea deal to paying $250 million in bribes to 1,829 politicians across every major party in Brazil. The same year, the company was implicated in a scheme involving expired meat. 20 countries banned Brazilian beef. The Batista brothers spent six months in jail on insider trading allegations. J&F, their holding company, signed a $3.2 billion leniency settlement. In 2023, the Supreme Court suspended the settlement, citing prosecutor bias. The brothers were acquitted of insider trading the same year. They returned to the JBS board in 2024. JBS listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2025. The company now employs more Americans than any other Brazilian-headquartered firm. Brazil holds ~90% of the world's niobium reserves. After China, Brazil holds the largest rare earth reserves on the planet. It is also a top-five lithium producer. The United States needs all of this to derisk from China. A few days before last night's event, Trump and Lula spent three hours at the White House on trade, security, and critical minerals. The bridge is being built. JBS is the operational anchor in protein and food. BTG is the financial anchor in capital markets. The Trump administration completes the political triangle. Either this coalition builds the U.S.-Brazil corridor, or China builds it instead. There is no third option. I am a realist about the history and an optimist about what comes next. Attached is a clip from Wesley's award acceptance speech at the event I attended last night.
Drew Crawford17,522 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
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