Planaltino, Brazil - As a young soil scientist, Edson Lobato looked out at the vast savanna of central Brazil and imagined fields of soy, corn, and cotton where most saw an inhospitable mass of red earth and tangled trees.

His friends and family urged him to take his agronomy degree elsewhere, somewhere it would make a difference. But he joined Brazil's agricultural and livestock research agency (Embrapa) and relocated to the country's heartland, called the cerrado, where there was, at the time, little besides wooded plains, termites, and deer.

Embrapa then set out to prove that those soils could produce like the most efficient cropland of Idaho. The agency poured millions into research. It sent teams of scientists like Mr. Lobato to the American Midwest to glean as much know-how as possible.

Today his vision has helped turn Brazil into the world's largest exporter of soybeans, beef, chicken, orange juice, ethanol, and sugar.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1112/p01s01-woam.html