The Siebt family started Fazenda Gaucha in 1976, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, literally from nothing. They started from less than nothing. Rogerio Luiz Siebt and his wife, Solange arrived when he was 21 and she was 19. There was no power or water. The only means they had to travel was the main dirt road that ran from the southeastern regions of the country to the capital of Brasilia.
Fazenda Gaucha literally translates to ?Cowboy Farm.? Many of the people who came to the Cerrado biome in the central state of Minas Gerais Brazil were called ?cowboys? and thought to be crazy. We were told one story of a man (not the Siebt family) who went to his state?s offices to find out how to get the title of land in the region for farming. He was laughed at and basically told that he could have whatever he decided to fence in.
They didn?t realize he would fence in over 100,000 acres.
While this sounds like a great success story, it ends up having a sad chapter as well. Eventually, land wars erupted in the region and people started jumping land claims and stealing property from farmers who were trying to establish themselves. With no help from the government or law enforcement, it was essentially the wild west. This farmer lost his life, the family lost a significant amount of their land to claim thieves, and now their son still farms about a tenth of what they first established.
Matthew Kruse is an Iowa-raised farmer, who also went to Brazil in the early 2000s to establish farming to the north of Brasilia. It was there he met his wife, Rogerio Siebt?s daughter Carol. They took us on this tour of her family operation as part of an ag tour covering many parts of Brazil.
Rogerio and Solange went to work and carved out their farm a little at a time, clearing and prepping the land to take their chance at farming. It was a rough beginning, but in that true spirit of farmers everywhere, they made it go. Now the family farm is a formidable operation that includes beef, a dairy that produces 5,500 gallons a day, coffee, and even soybean seed production. They raise about 14,000 acres of soybeans & 1000 acres of corn each year. The corn is grown primarily for silage for the cattle.
We will learn more about their dairy and coffee operations soon.
Carol?s brother Felipe tells us about the work his parents had to do to get the farm to what it is today.
Rogerio passed away within the last year, and Felipe reflects on the legacy his parents handed off to himself, Carol, and her twin brother Alexandre. The three of them now run the farm with their families, bringing up the third generation of family farmers. He talks about his parents? legacy and the legacy he hopes to leave for his children.
When we talk about Brazilian agriculture in the United States, it sometimes comes with a negative opinion. There are those that may try to make us focus on Brazil more as a competitor than as a partner in the task of feeding the world. We do have to face the fact that Brazil has many more acres available to be farmed, and they are developing. The areas we traveled through still had much acreage to be developed. Felipe wants American farmers to know that their Brazilian counterparts are farming for the same reasons we are. They want to help feed the world. They know they have the means to be able to contribute food to the billions who call this planet home. America cannot do it alone. Brazil cannot do it alone. Siebt says that there is plenty of room in the marketplace for both of our countries to do what we do best; feed the world and support family farms.
You can learn more about Fazenda Gaucha on their website.
