The effect Brazil’s harvest could have on animals halfway across the world.

Pedro Santos, from Alltech’s research department based in Araucária in Paraná state reviews 2016 Brazilian corn and soya production, and what this means for the 2017 harvest picture.

You might be familiar with the concept of the butterfly effect.

A butterfly flaps its wings in one location, say a farm in rural France, which leads to storms in, for example, the far east, or droughts in Brazil.

In turn, droughts in Brazil can then lead to poor health in animals on that same farm in rural France, in the far east, or, potentially, your own land.

While it’s a fanciful theory, the reality is that Brazil’s crop yield can have a substantial effect on your animals’ wellbeing, particularly pigs and poultry.

Based on the Alltech 37+ test, analyzing corn harvest results from Brazil between April and December 2016, 92% of samples shown contamination of fumonisins, a type of mycotoxin.

So how exactly does this affect pigs, and poultry? Well, let’s start at the beginning: the crops.