BRICS countries currently account for 42% of global food production and over 40% of consumption. Trade between the member states is becoming increasingly active, and experts anticipate the creation of new regional hubs and hope for the continuous exchange of knowledge and experience in innovations. BRICS Business Magazine explored the most effective areas of cooperation among the union’s participants and how BRICS countries can reshape the global agricultural landscape.
Within BRICS, there is cooperation between major agricultural economies, both leading exporters and large importers of food. Each member has its own strengths. For example, Brazil is a top exporter of meat, corn, and soy, while Russia is a major exporter of wheat, barley, and sunflower oil, according to Dmitry Rylko, CEO of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies. India ranks first in milk production, and China is the world leader in fruit, vegetable, and pork production, adds Andrey Bukhantsov, who heads the business transformation services for agribusiness companies at B1 Group.
Bukhantsov believes the formation of BRICS allows for the establishment of a complete framework for food security that focuses not only on agricultural production, but also on the entire supply chain. For instance, Russia is a major producer of fertilizers, while China and India are leaders in chemical plant protection products. In this new architecture, each country can confidently find its place. For example, Iran is the largest producer of pistachios and pomegranates, and Egypt is the largest supplier of oranges. “Expanding BRICS membership makes our consumer basket more accessible. When we are in the same economic space, trade becomes easier,” the expert said.
This is supported by the numbers. Whereas in 2023, BRICS countries accounted for more than a third of Russia’s agricultural exports (USD 15 billion, up 18% from 2022), in 2024, Minister of Agriculture Oxana Lut, after meeting with her BRICS colleagues, said that this figure could grow by another 6% and exceed USD 16 billion. According to calculations by RIA Novosti based on data from the UN Comtrade platform and national customs and statistics services, the main buyers of Russian fertilizers between January and November 2024 were Brazil, India, and China. Their combined imports exceeded USD 6 billion during this period.
The emergence of BRICS has led to more active trade, independent agricultural market expert Alexander Korbut said, pointing out that changing suppliers and buyers is always a long and complex process. Business, according to Korbut, begins with trust: “Mutual trust is also formed at the level of such intergovernmental agreements, as well as geopolitical and economic blocs. Countries have the opportunity to coordinate policies and trade, and negotiate with each other more easily if you see each other face-to-face at least once a year, if not more often,” said Leonid Kholod, an agricultural economist and former Russian Deputy Minister of Agriculture.
However, it is important to remember that geopolitics and commercial feasibility remain key factors, as Rylko described. For example, Moscow used to actively purchase meat from Brazil, but as Russia’s own pork and poultry production grew, the need for Brazilian imports decreased. Moscow continued to purchase only beef from Brazil, while in terms of pork and poultry, our countries have become competitors, Rylko said.
The expansion of BRICS opens up opportunities for creating a network of regional hubs, according to the report Agriculture of BRICS Countries: Expansion and Deepening, which was prepared by the National Coordination Centre for International Business Cooperation and the Institute of China and Contemporary Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The report’s authors say this could play a crucial role in ensuring stable supplies protected by the BRICS umbrella from the threat of unilateral restrictive measures.
Steps in this direction are already being taken: BRICS countries are discussing the creation of logistics hubs in Egypt, Russian Transport Minister Roman Starovoyt told journalists on the sidelines of the 2024 BRICS Summit. “Deliveries to this friendly country are growing every year, and the Russian Federation is a key supplier of wheat to Egypt,” TASS quoted the Minister as saying.
Since the main consumers of grain are African countries (exports of Russian wheat to Africa, according to the Agroexport Centre, increased by 35% over the first 10 months of 2024 to more than 21 million tonnes), the establishment of a large hub there would help reduce purchase prices, Korbut said. This would be especially beneficial for humanitarian aid to the poorest countries in Africa, Kholod said. Delivering food through a hub would be cheaper for everyone.
Kholod hopes that a logistics corridor with a large storage facility that can distribute food will also appear in the Southeast Asian region. Markets such as Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Indonesia have opened up, he said. “For example, within the hub, you could create an exchange and not only conduct public but also regular commercial transactions, where you could say: the Russian grain has already been delivered, please buy it. This would expand the sales market and the volume of transactions,” Kholod said.
There have been many attempts to revitalize and strengthen Russia’s border ties with China, Rylko said. In 2022, a road bridge over the Amur River connecting Russia and China, the Blagoveshchensk–Heihe bridge, was built. Through this bridge, Russia receives vegetables and fruits, while China receives processed soybean products.
“Trading is good, but it’s what is happening today. For further development, it is crucial to consolidate scientific efforts,” Korbut said. China, India, and Brazil rank first, third, and fourth globally in agricultural R&D spending, respectively. Together, they account for 15% of global agricultural R&D expenditures, which total approximately USD 70 billion annually, according to the authors of the report Agriculture of BRICS Countries: Expansion and Deepening.
Experts interviewed by BRICS Business Magazine believe that the exchange of advanced technologies and mutual investments in the agricultural industry could become a key factor in cooperation between BRICS countries. Brazil, for example, has extensive experience, after having undergone a real agrarian revolution over the past half-century and becoming one of the world’s largest food producers. This was largely due to the establishment of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) in 1973. Today, it includes more than 40 centres with various specializations, from tropical agriculture to agroenergy.
As noted by the Agroexport Centre, Embrapa’s achievements includes increasing the fertility of acidic soils in the Cerrado biome, which covers about 22% of Brazil’s territory. This allowed part of the Cerrado lands to be transformed into highly productive pastures, reducing the average time for raising livestock from four years to 18–20 months. Another achievement of Embrapa researchers is the development of a soybean variety with a life cycle 12 weeks shorter than that of a regular plant, allowing for two harvests of this crop per year.
“The continuous exchange of knowledge and experience is essential, for example, in the field of agricultural digitalization,” Kholod said, noting that China, India, and Russia in particular have experience using drones in fieldwork. Advanced technologies are also being developed by relatively new BRICS members: the UAE is focusing on hydroponic agriculture and vertical farms, such farms are often located within city limits in warehouse complexes, where a special environment is created with favourable conditions for growing greens, berries, and vegetables. The country is actively investing in aquaculture: as reported by the Russianemirates.com portal, in 2019, a farm in the Dubai desert has begun growing salmon. This fish, the second most consumed in the UAE, had been exclusively imported in the past.
By exchanging experience and scientific developments in agriculture, the BRICS union, as a world leader in the agribusiness sector, has the potential to become a hegemon, setting its own conditions and acting according to its own rules in this key sector of the global economy.
