"Brazil has become one of today's major producers and net exporters of grains. This was achieved by converting barren land into one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Since the mid-1970s, the tropical savanna, known as Cerrado, has been transformed into one of the world's...

"Although there is considerable historical literature describing the social and economic impact of drought on the prairies in the 1930s, little has been written about the challenges presented by drought in more contemporary times. The drought of 2001-02 was, for example, the most recent...