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Agriculture 🍊
To give you a sense of just how vast Brazil and its farming capabilities are, consider that at one point, until the year 2000, its orange farmland was larger than the entire island of Puerto Rico.
Fast-forward to today — although the land that grows oranges has halved, production has only decreased slightly thanks to efficiency and technology improvements, and Brazil's orange world dominance has remained.
It wasn't always this way; until the end of the 1970s, the US, specifically Florida, was the orange capital of the world. Florida has a few significant competitive disadvantages: much less land, more expensive labor, and hurricanes, which make crops more risky.
Nowadays, if you've had orange juice (and who hasn't?), it's likely that a little-talked-about company from Brazil, Citrosuco, had something to do with it. This company, often overlooked, plays a significant role in the global orange juice market.
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