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Although from the beginning sugar was the principal product in the northeast, cattle were a stimulus to colonization and the opening of new lands. In search of pastures for their herds, cattlemen pushed deep into the northeastern interior. Cattle raising changed from a simple adjunct of the great plantations to an independent activity. From it came the so-called “leather culture” that developed in this whole vast region of Brazil during the first centuries of the country’s history. The horse, upon which cattle raising depended, today inseparable from the gaucho of the Brazilian pampas and the vaqueiro of the northeast, became acclimated throughout the country. Today Brazil has more than 8 million horses.
In the northeast most of the cattle are descendants of the original herds. They are small and give little milk, but are tough and resistant. Over the years, the government and progressive cattle raisers have improved the stock throughout the country by crossing it with the zebu, or Brahman, introduced from India. This animal is well-adapted to the harsh northern conditions of heat, drought, and meager pasturage, and it thrives where the finest European stock dies off or quickly sickens and degenerates. Zebus, with their high shoulder humps, high-domed skulls, and long, drooping ears, have become common in most of Brazil, adding an exotic yet somehow not incongruous note to the landscape.
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At the turn of the 20th century, zebus were imported into the huge section of fine cattleland in Minas Gerais called the “Minas Triangle,” which is now the center of the cattle industry. They became acclimated so successfully that zebu-owning became a passion with cattle raisers; prices soared, zebu buying and selling became a form of gambling, and there was wild speculation. In the 1920s the fever reached such a pitch that a single good bull brought as much as $7,500, compared to an average price of $250 for bulls of European breed.
Outside the beef-raising Triangle, the cattle of Minas Gerais are dairy cattle, and their products, including the white Minas cheese (no longer seen on every table at least once a day), are sold everywhere. Beef cattle need huge tracts of land, and with the rapid and progressive industrialization of the central-southern part of the country the cattle are being shifted to the wilder regions of Goiás and the Pantanal in Mato Grosso, which offer favorable conditions and are also near the biggest consumer of beef, the State of São Paulo.
In Pará, especially on the island of Marajó, the Indian water buffalo has been introduced and seems completely at home. The wilderness and abundant rivers and swamps of the huge island provide the kind of semi-aquatic life this semidomesticated beast prefers, while ordinary cattle, even the zebu, do not thrive there.
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In a country with few refrigerators, the industry of making charque, a dried, salted meat which does not spoil easily and which is usually cooked with the staple black beans and rice, is very important. The industry started in the northeast and was taken by immigrants to Rio Grande do Sul. Although outranked in total number of cattle by Minas Gerais, this state now raises the country’s finest beef and is a center of the meat-packing industry. With 72.8 million head, Brazil is second only to the U.S. in number of beef cattle, but not in beef production, primarily because of poor disease control, inadequate transport and refrigeration facilities, and antiquated methods.
The largest herds of sheep — Brazil has some 22 million head — are also in Rio Grande do Sul, and crude wool is beginning to rank as an important export. With cotton, a major export for years, these herds also provide some material for the textile industry, which has grown enormously in the last decade.
The country’s immense coastline and teeming rivers should make fishing and processing fish much more important industries than they are. But commercial exploitation has just begun, and fish still represent one of the greatest undeveloped resources of the country. In the States of Pará and Amazonas there is, for example, the pirarucu, the “fresh-water codfish,” weighing up to five hundred pounds.
The commercial catch in the Amazon runs to only 90,000 tons a year, largely because fishing techniques used in the river are still primitive, as are those of many of the coastal fishermen. The beautiful, traditional jangadas of the northeast are merely rafts made of balsa trunks lashed together. They have one sail, and every object aboard must be tied fast to the deck. The fishermen venture on the high seas aboard the jangadas, but the hauls of fish they bring back are usually so small that it has been said that the real place for the picturesque jangada is the folklore museum.
Some modernization has been taking place in the fishing industry. Several Japanese firms have formed motorized fleets in the south, specializing in tuna and whale. A whale-processing plant has been built at Cabo Frio, a coast town east of Rio. Whales are abundant, and whale meat is being urged on a somewhat reluctant public in the coastal markets as the cheapest form of meat. Lobster fishing has also been increasing, chiefly in Pernambuco and Ceará. Canning factories are being built along the coast.
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Coffee has been subject to as many ups and downs as any other Brazilian resource, but it has certainly not been troubled by underexploitation. For many years it has been Brazil’s best-known product; coffee has been the greatest item of export and the biggest source of income. Brazil produced almost 4 billion pounds in 1960. It supplied the world with nearly half its coffee, earning the country 56 per cent of its total foreign-trade income.
Brazilian coffee had modest origins. Early in the 18th century, a Brazilian stole shoots from French Guiana, where the French had started coffee plantations. The trees were first cultivated in the State of Pará. Later, seeds and shoots were distributed throughout the country. Cultivation remained small-scale until the 19th century, when coffee had its first great phase in Rio de Janeiro and Minas. The cultivation of coffee in these states, particularly in Rio de Janeiro, depended directly on slave labor, and coffee profits made the fortunes of the Rio de Janeiro barons. With the abolition of slavery in 1888 the barons went bankrupt.
São Paulo did not have as much slave labor and was far-sighted enough to encourage immigration. In the crucial years before and after abolition, immigrants — principally from Portugal and Italy — came in great numbers. In addition to this labor supply, São Paulo had its marvelous terra roxa (“purple earth”), which according to the Paulistas, God created especially for the raising of coffee. Also coffee, which already had been named “the vampire,” since within a few years it exhausted the soil, had declined in the State of Rio. In the year of abolition, for example, the States of Rio and Minas produced twice as much coffee as São Paulo; ten years later São Paulo was producing much more than both states together. Nevertheless, even with improved methods of cultivation, the terra roxa of São Paulo in turn began to be exhausted. Coffee continued its march to the south and to the west; in the late 1920s tracts of the precious dark red soil were found in the wild country of northwestern Paraná. Like a green army, the coffee trees of the planters triumphantly took over, pushing back the virgin forest and driving the wild animals farther into the interior. In the shade of the coffee trees new towns were born. A typical example is Londrina, a modern and prosperous city located where only a few decades ago stood the untouched forest. At present the coffee trees are penetrating into the State of Mato Grosso.