Brazil grew almost none of the apples it ate sixty years ago, and one state in the south changed that.
In 1960, the average Brazilian ate less than a kilo of apples a year, and most of them came from Argentina.
By the 1970s, apples were the second biggest farm import in the country, costing more than US$100 million.
Two brothers in the hills of Santa Catarina decided to find out whether the fruit could grow there.
In 1963 they brought in a French agronomist named Roger Biau, along with apple seedlings from France.
They built him a French style castle in 1966 so he would stay.
Then the rules changed.
A 1966 federal law let companies cut up to half their income tax by planting trees, and fruit trees counted.
Santa Catarina created its own temperate fruit program in 1968.
The first commercial apple orchard in Brazil went into the ground at Fraiburgo in 1969.
Higher up the mountains in São Joaquim, Japanese families planted the Fuji variety that professor Kenshi Ushirozawa brought from Japan.
Brazil grew about 13,000 tonnes of apples in the 1970s, 183,000 in the 1980s and 858,000 in the 1990s.
By the end of the 1990s the country fed itself, and in 1998 it started exporting.
Today Brazil sits among the ten largest apple growers in the world, and Santa Catarina alone grows about half the national crop.
An apple tree pays nothing back for years, and the tax law is what paid for the waiting.
Southern Brazil builds whole industries from zero when the incentive points that way.
@odanielscott Falou de nós pobres né, assalariados, CLT. Porque se for pro judiciário, políticos, ai vai longe, fora biênios, triênios, pilhas de regalias, etc....
@futurizando De novo essa história de Zebra, mas vai aonde, Espanha é atual campeã da Eurocopa, ta 37 jogos invicta, já foi campeã da copa do mundo em 2010.... meeeeu Senhor Amado.
@ZPotxolin 40 anos bebendo Brahma e Antarctica, cerveja tudo igual. Agora acrescentei moinho real (pelo preço) hehehe, custou mais que 40 a cx não vale a pena. Mas já experimentei várias dessas ai, dinheiro jogado fora.
@diegomgpereira@afonsoborges Isso que estamos em clima de fim de ano, festas, férias e tal. Você imagine esse povo estressado ali em julho, como que vão estar kkkk.