Episode 33: The Cost of Progress with Ben Guimaraes of Brazil

Excellent.

How much governmental influence would you say is involved in the exchange of cattle genetics?

Well, very little.

It's actually more like a promotion type of thing.

It happens primarily everywhere.

The UK has its promotion package or program to sell UK genetics to Brazil and other countries.

France has the same.

The US has also limited, but it also has.

And the Australians, they were very dispersed.

The British societies were not very engaged in exports.

There was limited number of collection sites that was qualified for exports.

So I was privileged to be able to see and help them establish some of the base ground for future exports.

It was a few ventures during my time, including one specifically that we brought a breed from Australia to Brazil called Ilawara, which is a type of dairy from Shorthorn.

So it's a dual purpose cattle from Ilawara region in Australia.

So it was much more like trying to... to get people together and have them to match their needs and the opportunities rather than really promoting itself because also the funds were limited and the government action is limited.

So we try to help the breed societies to become known in Brazil and to have good connections with the Brazilian AI centers that can import and distribute the semen and other genetics.

Excellent.

Well, What countries do you think are taking the most significant action in this effort to work with Brazil in regards to genetics?

Well, I would say by nature, Brazil has a very large connection to Europe from the history of our colonization to the time that we have a lot of new companies that are European-based, especially from Holland.

So we have a large called CRV Lagoa, which is a large Dutch AI center.

We also have Autogenetics from Canada.

And CEMEX also from Canada and SelectSires from the US.

So it's a kind of a very competitive environment for those IA centers trying to develop their own line of catalogs of different types of bulls from different breeds.

But it's been growing for quite some time.

I mean, I'm assuming they have been very successfully developing.