By Stefanie Eschenbacher
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian foodie hub Sao Paulo may be best known for its prized cuts of grilled meats and luscious sushi spreads, but some high-end restaurants have a new star ingredient: soy.
The agricultural powerhouse is the world’s largest producer of soy, shipping an average of more than a million tons per week to China.
But unlike Asia and other markets where soy is synonymous with cheap everyday protein, Brazilians eat so little of it that it has become a pricey niche offering.
On their carefully curated social media pages, top chefs prepare tofu cubes decorated with edible flowers and sticky rice with edamame topping, wrapped in thinly sliced carrots.
In the supermarkets of Sao Paulo, Brazilians earning a minimum wage would have to pay a full day’s wages for just 250 grams of tofu.
“It’s a treat,” said Lucinete Magalhaes, after ordering a tofu dish at a restaurant in chic Jardins. “In Brazil we are used to eating rice and beans every day, but we don’t really look at soybeans in the same way.”
According to agricultural consultancy Agromeris, Bolivians, Nigerians and Russians consume more soy on average than Brazilians. It found that Brazil was the only major market for foods made with soybeans that were in decline.
Jacob Golbitz, who led the study a few years ago, said it all has to do with culture. “If the culture ever changes, it will happen at a glacial pace,” he said.
Mass production of soy only began in Brazil in the 1970s, after new science opened the door to farming the cash crop in the country’s vast, sparsely populated interior.
Outside the Asian diaspora, Brazilians who pile brown and black beans on their rice every day still look askance at the exotic green beans – almost all of which are grown for export to Asia and Europe to fatten cattle, pigs, birds and fish.
Brazil is forecast to produce a record 170 million tons of soy in its next harvest, compared to the 125 million tons of soy grown in the United States, a level surpassed in 2020.
The boom has come with environmental costs. For decades, Brazil’s growing soy frontier has contributed to deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest (NASDAQ:) and the Cerrado Savanna.
ELITE FLAVORS
“We experiment a lot with tofu, to play with contrasts, to give it flavor and texture,” says Maria Cermelli, owner of Sushimar restaurant in Jardins, an affluent neighborhood where locals walk dogs in custom-made knitted sweaters that look old-fashioned. are. boutiques. “It’s still a novelty, but it’s becoming increasingly popular.”
Soy’s contrasting positions in Brazil illustrate a growing divide between global supply chains for mass-produced soft commodities and the niche cultivation of customized products such as Mexican corn and Peruvian potatoes for the tastes of the elite.
About 98% of Brazilian soy is genetically modified organisms (GMO) to withstand the intensive use of herbicides on industrial-scale plantations, which has contributed to the stigma in the local market.
So food companies that offer tofu and soy milk to picky Brazilians rely on the expensive parallel cultivation of organic, non-GMO soybeans – or imported products from far away Japan – and the prices are high.
“It is absurd that Brazil is importing soy,” said Alexandre Lima Nepomuceno of Embrapa, a research arm of the Ministry of Agriculture that opened the country’s soybean frontier 50 years ago.
“The GMO controversy has created a situation where each country has made its legislation, often very complex and confusing, which increases costs and makes this an impossible task.”
Brazilian law does not prohibit human consumption of GMO soybeans. However, companies go to great lengths and pay a hefty premium to purchase traditional soy, which for many has become synonymous with organic and healthy ingredients.
In the high-volume, low-margin commercial agriculture sector, it is rare for Brazilian producers to gamble on the non-GMO segment.
“Creating relevant demand for non-GMO soy is not easy,” said Gus Guadagnini, CEO of Brazil at The Good Food Institute, a think tank that studies the development of meat alternatives.
Where Brazilian companies have embraced traditional soy production, this often requires heavy investments.
Caramuru, the largest oilseed processor in the central state of Mato Grosso, deep in Brazil’s agricultural heartland, has gone so far as to build a separate plant for non-GMO soy.
Marcos de Melo, their agricultural inputs manager, said the parallel production was necessary because the tolerance for “contamination” of GMO soybeans is less than 0.1%.
However, Brazilians will not taste the final product of that special Caramuru line. The company’s non-GMO soy meal is intended for export to Europe for use in animal feed.
