It is my belief that that the coming decennium will be one where self-sufficiency in water, energy and food will be at the heart of the success of the economy of any country. Belgium scores terribly bad on each of those parameters, even when it comes to freshwater reserves. Brazil is the world's best performer on each of the 3:
1. More than 80% of the Brazilian electricity comes from hydro, more than half of the cars drive on ethanol, the country discovered vast oil reserves
2. Brazil has the biggest freshwater reserve of the world
3. Brazil is the biggest food exporting country in the world. It ranks third on exports with 34,4 billion US$ of food exports. Bigger than China with 27,86 billion US$ of food exports. But contrary to China, which also imports 22,92 billion US$ of foods, Brazil is only a very very tiny importer of food. The country imports less than 5 billion US$ of food products andeven doesn't rank in the top 5 list.
This in sharp contrast with South Africa. Bloomberg announced recently that South Africa become a net food importer last year for the first time since 1985. The country exported 29.9 billion rand ($2.9 billion) of agricultural goods and imported products valued at 30.3 billion rand. The European Union remains South Africa's most important export market, while imports are sourced mainly from the Mercosur countries, in particular Argentina and... Brazil... South Africa's main exports are wine, fruit and sugar, while its largest imports include rice, ethyl-alcohol, wheat and oilcake. Yes, Brazil is both a big wheat and rice producer.
This news is dramatic for South Africa. The democratically elected government of South Africa is forcing white farm owners to sell to the government which turns large white-run farms into many small black-run farms. One result is that food production is dropping. Since the trend of pushing whites off the farms will continue South Africa's food production will decline and the parallels to Zimbabwe will increase. Since the more talented younger whites mostly have left or will leave the real crunch is going to come as the older skilled whites get too old to work and die off. Zimbabwe shows where South Africa could end up.
And when it comes to 2009 successes: just as Jim Rogers I belief in long term food positions: sugar, coffee, cocao, wheat,... After the revenge of the nerds: the revenge of the farmers.
