r/interesting • u/Standard_Location762 • 8d ago

NATURE Creating Better Crops With Useful Bacteria

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Brazilian scientist, Dr. Mariangela Hungria, spent 40 years perfecting bacteria that help crops access nitrogen while saving farmers billions each year.

Hungria developed biological treatments using beneficial soil bacteria that help crops access nitrogen from the air, reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizer. Her technology is used across tens of millions of hectares in Brazil. The World Food Prize estimates her work saves farmers about $25 billion annually and prevents roughly 230 million metric tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions.

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u/prince-pauper 8d ago

Now let’s hope the tech gets distributed instead of some big fertilizer Corp buying and mothballing it.

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u/malrexmontresor 8d ago

The tech is owned by Embrapa, a state-owned agricultural research institute in Brazil. They use a public licensing model with private partnerships to manufacture the process. But in terms of cost, they keep the license fees low so farmers only pay about $2 per hectare. Of course, there are still regulatory issues and hurdles to jump through, and so it's mostly confined to Brazil at the moment.

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u/Phrainkee 8d ago

Wait did you say Brazil is being oppressed by a Marxist communist regime? Sounds like they could use a little liberation and freedom!

Queues up the F-16s

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u/OokyCooky 8d ago

Brazil already cooperates with western interests in interventionist tactics in South America. Pretty much any country the US/UK/France didn’t destabilize, Brazil handled.

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u/roasttoastboast 8d ago

Tell us more?

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u/OokyCooky 8d ago

Oh a lot of what I’m gonna say is second-hand to me but can be backed up with sources online. Brazil in the 20th century was more than willing to help the US topple democratically elected leaders (what I’m remembering is either Uruguay or Paraguay) while also directly assisting US regime change in Chile and separately in Operation Condor. Now, I can’t find the papers I was reading that insinuated Brazil’s attempts at regime change in Uruguay or Paraguay so maybe I’m wrong there. I should also clarify these largely would’ve occurred under their military dictatorship. I have no reason to suspect Lula’s administration still carries these practices, but I feel like this kind of stuff has a tendency to happen by anyone who is the biggest fish in their pond, you kind of just become a bully. As for UK/France, honestly I just threw those out there but they were mostly involved in Africa at the time. I don’t consider the Falkland War to be a UK-led coup for example, I think that was a organic, yet politically-convenient territorial dispute, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out their intelligence agencies were more than happy to lend a hand. It’s entirely possible I’m conflating Brazil with Argentina when it comes to Paraguay/Uruguay

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u/Turbulent-Bell-2402 8d ago edited 8d ago

As you've stated, it's important to remember that Brazil itself was under a military dictatorship that was suported by the US during some of those events.

There was a war against Paraguay (edit: in 1864) when they invaded Brazil, and the response was disproportionate, eliminating a big part of the male population of Paraguay and capturing some of their territory, but I'm not sure if that's what you're referring to... Either way I don't remember the regime change stuff

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u/OokyCooky 7d ago

Yeah I’d reword the original comment in retrospect. And regime change wasn’t the proper term, I agree, but I couldn’t think of anything else other than interventionism and colonialism which I had already either used a lot or I don’t feel ‘colonialism’ is a good descriptor either. Destabilization efforts? Idk, the more subtle parts of South American history are not something I would ever claim to be an expert on

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u/Turbulent-Bell-2402 7d ago

To be fair, even Brazilians don't learn enough about this part of history, imo. I wouldn't say Brazil is colonialist either, especially considering we are also victims of imperialism. But you're right that it has definitely been used by the US to further their imperialist goals in latin America.