Grain shipments through the ports of the Northern Arc exceed 30% of the total.

The growth of agricultural production generates a multiplier effect on the demand for transport and storage in Brazil, assessed Thiago Péra, professor at Esalq/USP, this Wednesday (5), at the VIII Seminar Challenges of Brazilian Leadership in the World Soybean Market, held at Embrapa Soja, in Londrina (PR). For him, this scenario also reveals historical structural problems and a model based on the use of highways, a mode that accounts for 65% of cargo in Brazil. According to him, while the country has 216,000 kilometers of paved highways, it has only 30,000 kilometers of railways — of which only about 10,000 kilometers are in effective operation —, in addition to a precarious network of more than 2 million kilometers of secondary roads. “The precariousness of these access routes generates annual economic and environmental losses,” said Péra. In his view, the development of the Northern Arc logistics corridors (North and Northeast regions) has increased the participation of these ports in grain exports, jumping from about 10% in 2010 to more than 30% in recent years. “The expansion of the Northern Arc created a zone of logistical-geographical competition in Mato Grosso, for example, in which the flow through the Northern ports became more advantageous for certain producing regions, rivaling the traditional flow directed to the Port of Santos,” he explained. Regarding railway infrastructure, despite the increase in the volume of grains moved by trains between 2010 and 2024, railway capacity has not kept pace with the expansion of the national harvest. “On the other hand, studies indicate that investments in railways can generate significant returns in GDP, increase government revenue, reduce carbon emissions from freight transport, and improve the real income of lower-income families,” he listed. 

This text was translated by machine from Brazilian Portuguese.