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There are plenty of lines you can draw on the globe but perhaps none is more consequential
than the equator. Of the 15 wealthiest countries in the world as measured by GDP per capita,
all are in the northern hemisphere. Only 800 million of earth's 7.6 billion residents
live south of the equator. There is a clear divide between north and south but of those
800 million people a quarter of them, about 207 million, live here in Brazil. The country
is an exception to the global trend. Brazil is the fifth most populous country in the
world and the most populous entirely within the southern hemisphere. Its economy has grown
enormously and the country is quickly developing. Although, the very land it sits on stacks
the odds against it. Its location gives it a disadvantage. Given this, the question is
whether Brazil can develop into a world superpower by the likes of the US, Europe, Russia, India,
and China or if the country is doomed to fail?
Brazil, of course, looks like this but in reality almost 80% of the country's population
lives here—within 200 miles of the coast. You do see a concentration of population near
the coast in any country as it provides a cheap and easy means of transportation by
boats and a source of food through fishing but few countries have such a severe concentration
of people by the oceans as Brazil. This small area, for example, is home to three of Brazil's
six largest cities. Normally this would help development as the area in between cities
will urbanize but this map doesn't tell the whole story—this one does. You see,
this area of Brazil is rather mountainous. The major cities mostly exist in small pockets
of low-altitude, flat land on the ocean. This is because major cities need easy water access
to get goods in and out. The majority of Brazil's coast is defined by steep, sheer cliffs. Petrópolis,
for example, a suburb of Rio, is a mere 13 miles from the ocean and yet it sits at almost
3,000 feet of altitude. The rare areas with low-altitude land on the water are where cities
like Porte Alegre, Rio de Janeiro, and Recife are but this pattern has two consequences.
First, these cities, while being on flat land themselves are surrounded by cliffs and mountainous
regions which means their growth is limited. There are plenty of cities that exist in mountainous
regions but the world's largest and most influential cities like London and Delhi and
Beijing all exist in areas with absolutely no geographical features limiting their growth.
The fact that Brazil's cities locate in rare low-altitude coastal land means that
the country will likely never have a megalopolis by the likes of the Pearl River Delta or the
US Northeast. It takes a surprising six hours to drive between Rio and Sao Paolo and since
there's no low-altitude coastal land in between them, there are really no major cities
in between them too. Brazil's cities are confined to the geographically convenient
areas which are spread out from each other. This means the cities can't collaborate
easily with each other thereby limiting Brazil's impact on the world stage.
Like any large country, Brazil's development potential is also linked to how it gets its
food. This, in fact, might be Brazil's greatest obstacle as it really doesn't hav e much
great farmland, at least yet. The country's main agricultural region is its south which
is blessed with great soil and great rivers that help transport crops away from their
farms. Interestingly, the same elevation that leads to steep coastal cliffs causes rivers
to run in a counterintuitive direction. The Tietê river, for example, starts near Sao
Paolo a mere 10 miles away from the Atlantic ocean but then runs inland almost 500 miles
where it flows into the Paraná River which eventually flows out into the ocean near Buenos
Aires, Argentina. If a farmer wants to export their food abroad, it's often cheaper to
first ship it the thousands of miles by boat on these rivers than just hundreds of miles
overland to Brazil's coast due to their poor road infrastructure. This means that
Argentina gets the business of packing up and shipping Brazil's food to other countries.
That's just lost money for Brazil as a result of their geography. Brazil's south, though,
does not even have enough land to feed the country's own 200 million residents. Given
that, the question is where to put the rest of the farms.
In Brazil's north is the Amazon basin. The central feature of this region is, of course,
the Amazon River which is navigable for boats. Normally this feature would lead to a significant
population as navigable rivers serve as cheap and easy transport for crops and goods but
the banks of the Amazon are a tough place to farm or live. Not only are they muddy and
unstable which makes building difficult, but the Amazon also regularly floods which means
that every year many of the communities on the banks of the Amazon can have their streets
underwater for months. Building and living in the Amazonian cities is difficult, but
what's more difficult is building the roads in and out. The largest city in the Amazon,
Manaus, is home to 2.6 million people, it's as big as Baltimore, and yet there are only
three roads connecting the city to the outside world. Many of the smaller towns around the
Amazon have no roads going in and out as its just incredibly costly and difficult to build
roads through the rainforest. In fact, rather unbelievably, there is not a single bridge
spanning over the Amazon so there is no way to drive from the northernmost region of Brazil
to the rest without taking a ferry. Overall, this whole area is just empty. Even if there
was the infrastructure to transport crops to market, farming in the Amazon involves
clearing huge amounts of land and even then, the soil is relatively infertile which leads
to poor yields. Despite being Brazil's largest state, Amazonas is home to just 1.8% of its
population. It just costs too much to build the infrastructure needed to live there.
To the south of the Amazon, though, is an area known as the Cerrado. This vast savanna
used to be in the same category as the Amazon—it was empty. The problem was not only that there
was no natural network of rivers to get crops out of the area but also that the soil was
too acidic and lacking enough nutrients to easily grow large quantities of crops. Between
both the Amazon and the Cerrado being off-limits for large-scale farming, that meant that Brazil
really didn't have much land at all for farming. 30 years ago, with only the south
to farm, Brazil was actually a net importer of food—it bought more food from other countries
than it sold. That was until researchers discovered that all you needed to do to fix the soil
was add phosphorous and lime. The phosphorous served as a fertilizer in the place of natural
nutrients and the lime worked to reduce the level of acidity. In the early 2000's, the
country spread more than 25 million tons of lime per year and so today the Cerrado accounts
for 70% of Brazil's farmland. In addition, Brazil has begun growing soybeans. This plant
is normally grown in more temperate climates such as the US, northern China, or Japan,
but through cross-breeding and genetic modification it can be modified to grow in warmer and acidic
environments such as the Brazilian Cerrado. Thanks to the enormous amount of land Brazil
has and these technological advancements the country has gone from producing 16% of the
world's soybean in 2005 to 31% today. A country's level of development is often
to linked to how good its natural transportation system is. That's part of why the US developed
so much so fast—it has a great system of navigable rivers right in its agricultural
heartland that helps get goods from the fields to cities fast and inexpensively. The Brazilian
Cerrado, though, does not have that. It doesn't even have much of a preexisting network of
roads since before this recent agricultural advancement barely anyone lived there. Therefore
anyone who wants to farm in the Cerrado has to find land, level it, treat it with phosphate
and lime, and build roads to get supplies in and crops out. Cerrado farms can be profitable
but it takes an enormous amount of money to build the infrastructure needed to start a
farm. It's not like the US or France or China where all you need is some land. The
consequence of this is that farms in Brazil tend to owned by corporations rather than
individuals because only corporations have the money to build farms. That therefore increases
the level of wealth disparity in Brazil. According to the World Bank's Gini index, Brazil is
the 11th most economically unequal country in the world. Lower wealth disparity and the
emergence of a middle class are indicators of economic development so the country should
want to fix this. Brazil's government has recognized its infrastructure problem as a
source of its wealth disparity and has therefore worked to build roads in the interior so that
more individuals can run farms but the government only has so much money to spend and it's
a big country. Brazil does, though, understand the importance
of its core. It understands that the coastal cities are constrained and that economic development
will come from the center. It was partially for that reason that the country decided to
move its capital from Rio de Janeiro to here—Brasília. The thinking was that putting the capital
in the core would stimulate the economically underdeveloped region and, in many ways, it
worked. The city simply did not exist before 1960 yet today more than 4 million people
live in its metropolitan area. Being located on relatively flat land unlike Rio, the city
can just grow and grow and grow without hinderance. Brazil has potential, but its defining issue
is that it's an expensive place. It's a vicious cycle. In order to make money, Brazil
needs to invest in its infrastructure but without people making money it doesn't have
the tax money to build what it takes t o transition into the first world. The question of why
tropical countries are less developed is an enormous one without a clear answer, but Brazil
is one of the most likely candidates to break this trend. It certainly lags behind other
developing countries like China, but as its agriculture industry develops it will become
a bigger and bigger exporter which will bring more money in. With time, its average income
will inch up. The country already does have major companies in other industries such as
banking, manufacturing, and oil but with how big Brazil is, agriculture is the one that's
the world's focus right now. Only France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States
export more agricultural products per year which is good company to be in. Brazil may
not have the explosive growth rate of some other less developed countries but by continuously
taking what it earns and reinvesting it to open up more of the country to agricultural
production it will continue its path to superpower status.
One of the common questions I receive is how I started making these videos. The first step
was learning the skills needed from writing to research to sound design and editing, but
for each and every one of them there's a course on Skillshare. Skillshare, you see,
is an online learning community that has more than 21,000 classes on whatever you want to
learn. The variety is astounding. You can learn skills to help you make videos, to show
off at parties, or even to help you get a job. There are also some great courses taught
by fellow YouTubers such as Mike Boyd and Kurzgesagt. What's best about Skillshare
is that you can try it all for free for two months exclusively by going to skl.sh/wendover3.
Skillshare makes this show possible and its a great place to learn or improve your skills
so please do check them out, once again, at skl.sh/wendover3. Thanks for watching and
I'll see you again in three weeks for another Wendover Productions video.
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