The good news: BRICS+ is still a net ag importer.
The bad news: all signs are pointing toward the alliance of countries moving away from the U.S. and the West.
Who are the BRICS+ countries?
First formed as an alliance in the early 2000s, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa were the original countries which then expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. In addition to the official members, there are partner and observer states as well as a long of countries who have applied for membership—so in all more than 30 countries.
Together, this alliance totals more than 30% of the global GDP, and 64% of the world’s population.
What should U.S. agriculture be focused on?
After hearing questions from farmers, Matt Clark, an economist at Terrain, published a report to answer those inquiries about the next world superpowers: BRICS+.
Clark says there are three questions he had repeated from farmers across the countries regarding the BRICS+ alliance.
- Can they dethrone the U.S. dollar?
- How much U.S. debt do they own?
- Can they avoid buying U.S. commodities?
Clark’s responses are centered on a handful of observations and data about the BRICS+ countries.
With more than 30 countries involved, while it’s a large group in terms of scale it’s also difficult to have all countries agree on policy.
“The difficulty of coordinate is enhanced by the fact that the countries in BRICS+ are historically less ‘economically open,’” Clark says.
He adds the group meets annually, and directionally, they have been outspoken on creating their own monetary system and being less connected to the West.
However, in Clark’s analysis, the countries aren’t self-sufficient to feed their own population, and for the foreseeable future they can’t move completely away from U.S. agriculture.
“The group has the economic size and population base to wield global influence,” Clark says. “However, the influence of BRICS+ is likely to play out over the long term due to the relative youth of the group and lack of coordination between many countries that are geographically and geopolitically diverse. In the immediate term, BRICS+ is unlikely to displace the U.S. dollar as the standard-bearer of global currency, nor can BRICS+ produce enough agricultural goods to be a self-sufficient trade bloc.”
Measures of agricultural growth.
Anderson Nacaxe, CEO and Co-Founder of Oken Finance released analysis of the global crop protection market showing Brazil in the No. 1 spot.
Brazil’s market for crop protection products reached $14.3 billion in 2024.
The U.S. was in the second-place spot at $13.3 billion.
China is third with $10.8 billion.
Other countries showing growth and increases in use of crop protection and ag technologies included Argentina and India.
