Northern NSW plays host to young Brazilian farm leaders group

A group comprising some of Brazil’s leading young farmers has recently toured northern New South Wales as part of a knowledge-exchange program to learn about Australian agriculture.

Farmers around Armidale and Tamworth earlier this month played host to the 31 young up-and-coming Brazilian producers, who are part of Agrileaders, an educational program run by Rabobank in Brazil.

Representing a diverse range of agricultural operations – including soybean, beef cattle, corn, cotton, sugar and coffee – the Brazilians were given an insight into the running of large-scale operations in the north of the state, with visits to major cropping, beef cattle and cotton farms.

The group – primarily comprised of young farmers planning to take over, or currently involved in, their family farms – also attended formal learning sessions in Sydney, covering topics such as risk management, derivatives trading and benchmarking.

Now in its ninth year, the Brazilian Agrileaders program conducts annual programs where the students develop new management skills for direct application into their businesses and are able to participate in rural exchange to learn about, and benchmark against, farm business practices in other countries.

This was first time the group had visited Australia, with previous tours including the USA, Chile, Uruguay, Zambia and the Netherlands.

Brazilian Agrileaders is one of a range of educational programs run by Rabobank throughout the world, aimed at developing best-practice skills and knowledge within the sector.  In Australia, they include the Rabobank Executive Development Program (aimed at progressive, leading-edge Australian farmers) and the Rabobank Farm Business Program (developing business skills among the up-and-coming farm leaders of the future).

Rabobank Brazil executive director Fabiana Alves, who travelled with the group, said the young Agrileaders were particularly impressed by the efficiency levels they saw on Australian farms.

“Some of the equivalent-sized farms in Brazil might have hundreds of workers, where in Australia the same type of operations are being run with just a very small number of employees,” she said. 

“Some of the other learnings the Agrileaders took away from their Australian visit were the amount of technology that is applied in farming and the way Australian farmers use water resources sustainability and particularly in dealing with such scarcity of rain.”
 

Rabobank Australia & New Zealand is a part of the international Rabobank Group, the world’s leading specialist in food and agribusiness banking. Rabobank has more than 115 years’ experience providing customised banking and finance solutions to businesses involved in all aspects of food and agribusiness. Rabobank is structured as a cooperative and operates in 40 countries, servicing the needs of approximately 8.6 million clients worldwide through a network of more than 1000 offices and branches. Rabobank Australia & New Zealand is one of Australasia’s leading rural lenders and a significant provider of business and corporate banking and financial services to the region’s food and agribusiness sector. The bank has 94 branches throughout Australia and New Zealand.

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