Brazil Is Developing a Weapon for Trade Wars: Fertilizer in the Amazon
- Serena Valentino
- Nov 9
- 5 min read
By Samantha Pearson | Photography by María Magdalena Arréllaga for WSJ
Nov. 5, 2025 2:00 pm ET
AUTAZES, Brazil—In the heart of the Amazon rainforest, workers are preparing to dig a vertical shaft as wide as a subway tunnel half a mile down into the ground.
It isn’t gold or oil hidden here in a grassy clearing between indigenous lands, but fertilizer—something arguably just as precious to this vast farming nation.
As global trade tensions flare, Brazil has replaced a growing share of U.S. agricultural exports to China, which has shunned American soybeans in response to Trump administration tariffs. The Trump administration’s imposition of 50% tariffs on Brazil this year raised the stakes for the country’s globally dominant agriculture industry to carry Latin America’s largest economy through the trade war.
But fertilizer remains Brazil’s Achilles’ heel. Brazil imports some 90% of the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium nutrients it needs, primarily from Russia, whose war in Ukraine plus Western sanctions have made supplies precarious.
A solution lies in the world’s largest rainforest.
The Toronto-based miner Brazil Potash Corp. is investing $2.5 billion to build an underground potash mine near the town of Autazes, a few miles from the banks of the Madeira River, tapping into the vast Amazon Potash Basin, one of the world’s largest.
Discovered by accident more than 50 years ago when Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras was drilling for oil, the pinkish-orange slab of potassium chloride stretches for some 250 miles deep beneath the jungle—the dried-up remnants of an ancient ocean.
Production at the company’s Autazes mine, estimated at 2.4 million tons a year, is slated to begin in 2030. Destined entirely for use in Brazil, that output would supply roughly a fifth of the country’s potash needs over the mine’s 30-year lifespan. The basin itself holds enough deposits to allow Brazil to become close to self-sufficient in potash.
A dedicated potash supply would help shield Brazil’s harvests from geopolitical shocks like Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, when record potash prices sent panic through the country’s farm belt. In turn, it would give Brazil an edge at times like this, when U.S.-China tensions are rerouting trade flows and raising demand for Brazil’s agricultural products.
“We have a gift from God here, and we need to make the most of it,” said Raphael Bloise, head of the project in Brazil. The U.S.-listed miner plans another site at Fazendinha, close to where the Madeira meets the Amazon River, Bloise said.
Brazil needs more fertilizer than other agricultural giants to sustain its current output. Blessed with a climate that allows year-round farming, Brazil’s soils are quickly depleted of nutrients. Its clay-rich soil also struggles to retain fertilizer during heavy rains.
Chinese investors have already shown interest in the project, which includes a port terminal and 102-mile-long power line. Under a potential swap agreement, Beijing could agree to acquire potash from the mine on behalf of Brazilian farmers’ in exchange for guaranteed future deliveries of their crops such as soybeans and cotton, the company said.
But the location of the Autazes project in the state of Amazonas is both a blessing and a curse.
Amazonas neighbors Mato Grosso state, Brazil’s largest producer of soybeans and a major fertilizer consumer—some 400 miles away through dense rainforest, but still closer than Russia.
Trucks already haul Mato Grosso’s harvest north to river barges bound for ports on Brazil’s Atlantic coast. Once the mine opens, they could return to Mato Grasso’s farmlands loaded with potash instead of empty.
“Brazil is a massive exporter of agricultural goods to China, but they’re exposed to all these geopolitical risks that impact their fertilizer supply—having a secure source of potash in their backyard is essential,” said Matt Simpson, chief executive of Brazil Potash.
But digging a giant hole in one of the world’s most environmentally and culturally sensitive regions is no easy task, said Bloise, who spent much of his career developing Carajás, the world’s largest iron-ore mine, also located in the Amazon.
Brazil Potash has spent the past decade fighting lawsuits and trying to win over everyone from the local mayor to the village priest. The company finally has permission to go ahead.
Brazil Potash plans to mine only in areas outside the lands of Mura, the indigenous group whose territory overlaps with parts of the potash deposits. The Mura were initially suspicious. Ever since colonial times, they’ve had to fight off violent incursions, first from Portuguese colonizers and more recently illegal gold miners.
Today about 35 of the 40 Mura villages in the region support the mine, won over by the company’s promises of a better future, according to the Mura Indigenous Council. Brazil Potash has invested in a local school and soccer team, and has promised to help the Mura expand income from fish farming, small-scale agriculture and handicrafts.
In Urucurituba, the riverside community of about 500 families closest to the mine, poor sanitation has led to frequent bouts of diarrhea. The dock collapses when the river floods, and pirate attacks have become common as drug traffickers push deeper into the Amazon. There is no police presence, and while the town has a health clinic, doctors visit only every other week.
“We don’t want this for our children,” said Aldinelson Moraes Pavão, the Mura chief of Urucurituba, adding that indigenous communities also wanted what other Brazilians want.
“Who doesn’t want to drink a glass of chilled water from the fridge, or have a car, or sleep in a room that’s air-conditioned?” he said.
The mine cuts to the core of Brazil’s dilemma over the future of the rainforest and its people, as world leaders convene in the Amazon this month for the U.N. climate summit.
Environmentalists warn that even legal mining could set a dangerous precedent in the Amazon, paving the way for deforestation, land grabbing and social conflict.
Critics say that infrastructure built for industrial mines—such as access roads, ports and power lines—inevitably attracts illegal loggers, ranchers and wildcat miners deeper into the jungle. Policing a forest almost as large as the contiguous U.S. is nearly impossible.
But others argue that Brazil must find a way to support the approximately 30 million people—indigenous and not—who live in its share of the Amazon, many of them in deep poverty. Cattle ranching has already devastated vast stretches of land, depriving indigenous communities and others of traditional livelihoods. Compared with farming, mining leaves a relatively small footprint.
Brazil Potash argues that producing fertilizer domestically could ease pressure on forests nationwide, since many farmers clear new land instead of reusing old fields simply because they lack the nutrients to restore soil fertility.
In Autazes, a town of about 50,000 people, most families depend on government jobs or welfare payments, Mayor José Thomé Neto said. The proposed mine would create several thousand jobs during construction and operation, along with as many as 30,000 indirect jobs across the region, he said. Local officials expect the town’s population to double over the mine’s 30-year lifespan.
“There is a huge expectation here,” Neto said. “This project will contribute to food security in our country but also a new economic model for the state.”
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