Brazil is an agricultural powerhouse, vital to global food security. However, its agricultural dominance masks a critical supply chain vulnerability: the country currently imports roughly 85% of its total fertilizer needs. For potash—a macronutrient essential for high-yield crops like soybeans and corn—that import dependency skyrockets to 96%. In 2025 alone, Brazil spent approximately US$15 billion on foreign fertilizers.
Currently, Brazil relies on a single producing conventional potash mine with gradually depleting reserves, covering only about 3% of domestic consumption. To solve this bottleneck and tap into what is anticipated to be one of the world's largest undeveloped potash basins, the Brazilian government has introduced sweeping new legislation.
Here is a look at how the new legislative landscape aims to transform Brazil's potash reserves from untapped potential into a self-sufficient domestic industry.
The Catalyst: The Profert Program Explained
In August 2026, the Brazilian Senate approved Bill PL 699/2023, establishing the Fertilizer Industry Development Program (Profert). Now awaiting President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's signature, the bill is designed to drastically lower the financial barriers for mining companies looking to build domestic fertilizer infrastructure.
Profert tackles the problem through three main pillars:
- Investment Tax Credits: It creates a production tax credit of up to 20% on investments in domestic fertilizer production, capped at R$2 billion annually between 2027 and 2031.
- Guaranteed Market Demand: It establishes a mandatory domestic-content floor for fertilizers sold in Brazil. Starting at 2% in 2027, this floor will rise to 10% by 2037, with the potential to scale up to 30% depending on domestic supply availability.
- State-Backed Financing: It authorizes BNDES (Brazil’s National Bank for Economic Development, the premier state-owned lender for large-scale infrastructure) to open specific credit lines to fund the construction of new fertilizer projects.
Leveraging SUFRAMA for Amazonian Development
Because some of Brazil's largest undeveloped potash basins are located in the northern state of Amazonas, new mining projects can combine Profert's benefits with SUFRAMA incentives.
SUFRAMA (the Superintendence of the Manaus Free Trade Zone) is a regional economic development agency created by the Brazilian government. Its core purpose is to stimulate industrial and commercial growth in the Amazon basin by offering massive federal and state tax exemptions to companies operating within its jurisdiction.
When a mining company combines the new Profert tax credits with SUFRAMA’s existing regional tax shelters, the reduction in Initial Capital Expenditure (CapEx) is staggering. For a large-scale mining operation—which typically requires billions of dollars to build—these combined regimes can wipe out hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes on construction materials and equipment.
Path to Self-Sufficiency and Encouraging New Players
Unlike nitrogen and phosphate production, which can often be ramped up by restarting idled industrial plants, potash requires the discovery, permitting, and construction of entirely new mines. This makes the barrier to entry incredibly high, keeping new players out of the Brazilian market.
Profert changes the calculus for global and domestic mining firms in several ways:
- De-risking the Investment: The combination of BNDES credit lines and SUFRAMA/Profert tax exemptions drastically reduces the amount of capital a new entrant needs to raise from private markets before breaking ground.
- Forcing Domestic Purchases: The domestic-content floor creates a legally mandated, captive market. Financiers and new mining companies are assured that if they produce potash in Brazil, agribusinesses will be forced by law to buy it.
The geological potential is already there. For example, large-scale projects currently in development in the Amazonas basin project a capacity of roughly 2.4 million tons per year. A single project of that magnitude is equivalent to six times Brazil's entire current domestic output, capable of supplying 20% of the nation's total demand.
If Profert successfully incentivizes just a handful of major new players to develop operations within Brazil's vast, untapped mineral basins, the country possesses the geological capacity to systematically replace its reliance on foreign imports. By transitioning from a 96% import dependency to a thriving, localized supply chain, Brazil is laying the groundwork to insulate its agricultural sector from global trade shocks and geopolitical supply constraints.