Evogene's Casterra unit eyes castor crop growth in Brazil
Ofer Haviv, CEO and chairman of Israeli company 'Casterra,' said that the company wants to work with Brazilian farmers in order to plant castor plants for biofuels. The company is targeting a planted surface area of 200,000 ha (494,211 acres), over the next five-year period.
Brazil is one of the world's leading producers of biofuels. Its biodiesel industry and its ethanol industry are fed by vast amounts soy and sugarcane, among other raw materials.
Castor production in Brazil is still small when compared with other commodities. According to Conab, the country's crop agency, castor will cover only 76,200 acres in the 2025/26 crop compared to 48.5 million acres of soy.
Casterra, owned and operated by Israeli biotech firm Evogene, conducted commercial field trials in Brazil's Bahia State last month. The plantations covered 74 hectares.
Haviv, in an interview with this week's edition of the Jerusalem Post, said: "We would like to find large?farmers who will begin to grow castor at a commercial level. We are also now talking to local players that will buy the grain from farmers."
One MILLION HECTARES
Haviv stated that the castor crop could reach 1 million hectares in the next 10 to 15 years.
He added that the goal is to have farmers grow castor during Brazil’s second crop season, also known as safrinha.
Casterra, which believes it's too late to plant castor in this year's crop, hopes to create interest in the safrinha by 2027. It plans to educate farmers about how to cultivate this crop from 2026.
Casterra will invest between $5 and $10 million in order to create a strong marketing team, an agronomical assistance team, as well as a seed-production facility.
Haviv?added that Casterra is working with an Italian company on improving?the performance of the harvester heads to limit grain losses.
He said that the second part of his work is to improve the seed, the growth protocol and the performance of machinery. Oliver Griffin, Kirsten Donovan and Kirsten Griffin contributed to the reporting.
(source: Reuters)
