Brazil has a young generation of farmers, but innovation in the agricultural sector is still largely driven by companies outside the farm industry, said Dirceu Júnior. Specialists argue that big tech firms are accelerating the adoption of advanced technologies among large-scale producers, while small and medium-sized farmers remain far from this reality.
The debate comes amid the first direct dispute among Mercosur countries over the internal distribution of agricultural quotas under the Mercosur–European Union trade agreement. Using the temporary first-in, first-out (FIFO) rule, which gives access to the tariff-free quota to whoever registers exports first, Argentina and Uruguay quickly exhausted the duty-free quotas for products such as rice and eggs in the first month of the treaty’s implementation, which began on May 1. The result frustrated new license requests from Brazilian exporters and highlighted operational inequalities at the start of the transatlantic free-trade arrangement.
According to recent data released by regional authorities, the Mercosur quota for rice exports to the European Union in 2026, set at 6,667 tons, has already been fully filled. Valeria Csukasi, an official from Uruguay’s Ministry of Economy and Finance, said on X that Uruguay secured 63% of the total volume, a result also celebrated by President Yamandú Orsi. The remaining rice quota was filled by Argentina.
In the egg segment, Argentina’s Minister for Deregulation and State Transformation, Federico Sturzenegger, said Argentine producers secured 100% of the preferential tariff quota for the European market, along with a significant share of the honey market. He said the strong performance was helped by the speed of Argentina’s new digital guide for the Single Window for Foreign Trade (VUCE), launched on May 3.
The early exhaustion of quotas has raised concerns in Brazil about access, timing and administrative readiness within Mercosur as the bloc begins to operate under the new trade framework with the European Union.
