Global Agrifood for Good: How Brazil, China and Romania Feed Strategy into the World’s Future

In the age of semiconductors and space races, it is easy to forget that power still grows from the soil. Food — and the systems that process, transport, and brand it — remains one of the most enduring sources of national leverage. As climate disruption and conflict redraw supply chains, three countries illustrate how agrifood geography is becoming a form of strategy: Brazil, China and, increasingly, Romania.

Each has built (or is building) a triad of regions that embody scale, value, and integration — the three ingredients of modern food power.

Brazil: Scale Meets Integration

Brazil’s ascent as an agricultural superpower is a story of scale and smart integration. Mato Grosso feeds the world with soybeans, corn, and cotton — a mechanised empire whose tractors never sleep. Yet volume alone is no longer strength; value chains define influence.

To the south, Santa Catarina, a smaller, denser state, has become the protein workshop of the planet. Its city of Chapecó, home to Aurora, BRF, and JBS’s Seara division, functions as a corporate cooperative republic: farms, processors, and ports operating in near symbiosis.

Where Mato Grosso exports calories, Santa Catarina exports brands and standards —  halal certifications, cold-chain logistics, and trust in global retail relationships. Together, they complete Brazil’s agrifood equation: volume in the centre, value on the coast, cooperation in between.

China: From Grain Security to Food Strategy

China’s triad mirrors Brazil’s — but scaled to empire. Heilongjiang, the black-soil province in the northeast, is Beijing’s grain insurance policy, producing over a tenth of the nation’s cereals. It is the “Mato Grosso of Asia”, a buffer against global shocks.

Further south, Shandong plays the role of the industrial coast — a hybrid of ports, processing, and innovation. From Qingdao’s seafood to Yantai’s fruit wines, Shandong translates agricultural volume into technological and branding sophistication.

In the west, Sichuan, anchored by Chengdu, closes the triangle. The province is both China’s pork powerhouse and the spiritual home of its condiments and cuisine. With giants like New Hope Group, Tongwei, and Shuanghui Development, Chengdu has become the Chapecó of China — where farm, factory, and flavour converge.

China’s food power is therefore multidimensional: grain in the north, value on the coast, and taste in the west— a model of redundancy, diversity, and soft power through food.

Romania: The Eastern European Outlier

In Europe’s east, Romania is quietly shaping its own agrifood triangle. Timiș and Arad, on the western plains, anchor large-scale grain and oilseed production feeding EU markets. Bacău, in the east, is home to vertically integrated meat and dairy processors such as Agricola, Romania’s equivalent of an industrial protein hub. Further north, Bistrița-Năsăud represents the cooperative, artisanal layer Western Europe prizes — a landscape of branded authenticity and rural resilience.

Yet a second branch of Romania’s agrifood architecture is emerging further south, across Ialomița, Călărași, Brăila, and Constanța — a corridor linking cereal production, animal husbandry, and maritime logistics. Here, vast Danubian farmlands meet the Black Sea, offering a rare combination of export scale, storage capacity, and transport advantage. Constanța’s port — now Europe’s eastern gateway — anchors this second triangle, positioning Romania as a bridge between Ukraine’s farmland and the Mediterranean’s food markets.

Romania’s challenge remains scale – which can be raised by investments, but its advantages are location and learning. With coordinated policy, targeted investment, and technology transfer, the Timiș–Arad–Bacău and Ialomița–Călărași–Brăila–Constanța axes could together form the dual Chapecó of Eastern Europe — one inland, one maritime; both vital to Europe’s food security and competitiveness.

Secrets of Excellence: Institutions and Inc. Champions

Behind every agrifood success lies a network of institutions and champions — the invisible architecture of expertise, capital, and credibility.

Brazil has long understood this formula. Its research powerhouse, EMBRAPA (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation), turns science into productivity gains. The Arab-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (ABCC) and APEXBrasil, the export-promotion agency, build global bridges for Brazilian protein and grains. Meanwhile, Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) trains agribusiness managers who blend technical know-how with global business fluency. At the industrial front, Chapecó’s giants — Aurora, BRF, and JBS’s Seara — show how cooperative culture and corporate scale can coexist, setting standards for integration.

In China, excellence is institutionalised through a blend of state planning and private innovation. The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) drives crop science and biotechnology, while the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs ensures coordination across provinces. In Chengdu, New Hope Group, Tongwei, and COFCO (China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation) act as corporate diplomats — modernising supply chains, building brands, and linking rural China to global consumers. The Sichuan Agricultural University and Chengdu Research Base for Rural Revitalization complement this with human capital and sustainability research.

In a century obsessed with chips and data, agrifood remains the oldest and most tested form of strategic depth. The world’s next great powers will be those that combine natural abundance with industrial intelligence, regional ecosystems with global branding, and local farmers with international consumers. From Mato Grosso to Heilongjiang, from Chapecó to Chengdu, from Timiș to Constanța, the soil still speaks — and those who listen carefully will harvest not just crops, but influence. Romania, my country, is ready to rise as a global (agri)food for good power.

Written by Radu Magdin.