Brian Winter: prediction

Transcript context

…But plenty of countries have that. Brazil’s done something unusual. There’s an old expression — thankfully a bit out of date now — that held that Brazil was the most efficient farming country in the world until goods left the farm. What that was a reference to was the fact that the roads, infrastructure, rail, ports, and so on were not really up to par. But there has been an improvement. Not enough, but again, this is another area where, over the last 20 years, this soy that used to travel over two-lane or even one-lane mud roads — at least now it’s paved in a lot of places. Some of these rail links are also improving. This is another area where, I think, if you take that longer-term perspective, things are getting a little bit better. What’s the economic geography of Brazil going to look like? All the wealth near Mato Grosso and the north just very, very poor? Or the north empties out? How’s that going to work? There used to be some modest degree of balance.…

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