Minnesota Farmers Union

(May 7, 2010) - Usually, reports from meetings of a group of country leaders don't attract our attention all that much, but articles written after a recent meeting of leaders from a handful of developing countries made us sit up and take notice. The event was a joint meeting of two overlapping groups of developing countries: BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa) or as some have dubbed the combination BRICs.

These nations represent 42 percent of the world's population, 32 percent of the world's arable land mass, and 22 percent of the global GDP. They have been important in leading the global recovery following the recent economic crisis. They also see themselves as growing faster in the future than the US, the European Union, and Japan. And they want to use their new-found economic clout.