Brazil is selling a lot more pork and poultry to Russia.
Russians stopped buying meat from the United States, Canada
and most member countries of the European Union for political reasons related
to Russia’s takeover of Crimea and battles in Eastern Ukraine.
Canada and others applied "economic sanctions" to Russia to pressure President Vladimir Putin to back off in the Ukraine, prompting Putin to retaliate with his own "economic sanctions".
There is no evidence that Canada's economic sanctions have done anything to change Putin's aggressive politics, but it's clear that Canadian farmers and exporters are losing the Russian market.
Those markets may never come back if Brazil does a good job of satisfying Russian customers.
Russia granted export approval in August to about 100
meat-packing facilities in Brazil.
In September, Brazil’s poultry exports surged by more than
24 per cent to $719 million US and pork exports surged by more than 26 per cent
to $143 million US.
“The result achieved in September is already
coming from the increase in exports to Russia,” said Francisco Turra, president
of Brazil’s association for animal protein.
“We went from 8,000 tons in August (to Russia)
to around 20,000 tons in September,” he said.
