THE JOURNEY OF OUR HISTORY
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BEGINNING OF THE BUSINESS
Beginning of the 20th Century
Early 20th Century
1919: At the age of 31, João Moreira Salles, an accountant by training, driven by the coffee production boom in the region, opened Casa Moreira Salles in Poços de Caldas. It was a general store located in a strategic area connected to by train, which became a frequent destination for the elite and ruling classes, as well as a thriving business center.
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Banking and Brazilian Warrant.
1924
1924
The Moreira Salles group began when João Moreira Salles opened a banking section in his store, through which he represented various private banks and carried out small collection operations, withdrawals, and deposits. The credit mechanism for coffee plantations, the country’s main economic activity in the 1920s, was precarious. In the banking sections, customers deposited their earnings, usually from the coffee business, or were provided with the loans and credit they needed to farm the land, obtained by the sections from bank representatives. Most of the time, these banking sections were established in renowned retail stores in the countryside, with owners who were trusted and respected locally, as was the case with João Moreira Salles, in Poços de Caldas. This marked the beginning of an incipient private banking system in the country.
In the same year, Moreira Salles became a partner in the coffee-buying house Castro, Cardoso & Cia., which was renamed Castro, Salles & Cia. As a coffee trader located in one of the country’s main coffee-growing areas, it was natural – as was customary at the time – for Moreira Salles to provide certain financial services to his clients. If a farmer came to him with no cash but needed to purchase agricultural machinery or other inputs, he would make the sale and receive payment when the crop was harvested, plus interest. This and other operations made production viable. Consequently, banking sections soon emerged and were absolutely necessary in the country’s rural area. Correspondents of large private banks, or of Banco do Brasil, served as the only means of contact between these banks and local clients. Financing shifted from the large banks in the capital, which had no branches in the countryside at the time, to the banking sections representing them in the transaction.
At the same time, E. Johnston and Brazillian Warrant (an English company with the Brazilian corporate name Companhia Agrícola Fazendas Paulistas), initially established to offer warehouses to coffee producers and provide cash advances secured by harvest revenues, made a historic acquisition: the purchase of Fazendas do Cambuhy, located in the city of Matão in the state of São Paulo, with an area of 57,000 hectares, around 2.5 million coffee trees and 15,000 head of cattle. That same year, it was considered the largest coffee farm in the world, and at that time it was four times its current size. The sale was made by Nhonhô Magalhães or Dr. Carlos Leôncio de Magalhães, a pioneer from Matão responsible for the establishment of Fazendas do Cambuhy, on November 4, 1924. He received a check for 20,000 contos de reis, the largest check ever paid in Brazilian history. The news was prominently covered in the national and international press, leaving the world perplexed at the gigantic deal.
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BUSINESS EVOLUTION AND ACQUISITION OF FAZENDAS DO CAMBUHY
PREVIOUS YEARS UNTIL THE 1950s
YEARS LEADING UP TO THE 1950s
A few years later, the banking section within Casa Moreira Salles separated from the store, officially becoming Casa Bancária Moreira Salles, then Banco Moreira Salles. During this period, João Moreira Salles began to rely on his son, Walther Moreira Salles, to work in the family business. An important point in the business development occurred in 1927 when João, in a significant change in the company’s ownership structure, joined João Afonso Junqueira – a member of the oldest family in Poços de Caldas, which owned the land where the famous medicinal waters of the region were discovered. João Afonso remained a partner until 1933 when he then transferred his share to Walther Moreira Salles. After that, the company had only father and son as partners, and the strong understanding between the two was an essential element in its prosperity.
At the age of 21, Walther understood that the most dynamic part of the business was precisely the banking house, a financial institution that was becoming increasingly solid in the local context. The business gained significant momentum through partnerships with public authorities, particularly during Francisco de Paula Figueiredo’s terms in office between 1931 and 1939. Under Walther’s leadership, the Moreira Salles group expanded its activities beyond the financial sector and the borders of Brazil, diversifying into various activities through associations with international companies and conglomerates.
In the 1950s, through an operation conducted on the London Stock Exchange, the Moreira Salles group acquired Brazilian Warrant, along with Fazendas do Cambuhy and E. Johnston, as well as all the other companies that belonged to the English group. At that time, Fazendas do Cambuhy had 22,926.1 alqueires (approximately 55,279 hectares), seven million coffee trees, and played a crucial role in the history of Banco Moreira Salles, when San Tiago Dantas, then an executive of the group, made a bold decision to subdivide it to capitalize the bank. As a result of this capitalization process, Cambuhy’s area was reduced to 5,811.2 alqueires (14,063 hectares), and since then, it has followed a policy that balances production and conservation, protecting and restoring fragments of flora and permanent preservation areas (PPAs). 4,660 hectares of Cambuhy consist of native forests and PPAs, which have been maintained to this day. Thus, Cambuhy Agrícola’s forested areas represent the largest remaining forest on privately-owned land in the region.A SUMMARY OF FAZENDAS DO CAMBUHY’S HISTORY
The name Cambuhy has ancient origins, deriving from “Sesmaria do Cambuhy”, in reference to an agrarian measure from the time of the empire, in which the kings of Portugal ceded plots of land to the “Sesmeiros”. A “légua de sesmaria” represents 3,000 “braças” or 6,600 linear meters.
The spelling of Cambuhy with an “h,” dating back to 1770, is a remnant of the Portuguese orthography of the time. We know Cambuhy without an “h” as the fruit of the “cambuiseiro”, a wild Brazilian plant similar to the “jabuticabeira”, commonly found in our region. But it was certainly the name of the “sesmaria” that gave rise to Fazendas do Cambuhy, considered the largest private rural property of the time.
“Sesmaria do Cambuhy” was a tract of land located between the municipalities of Matão, Araraquara and Tabatinga, with an original area of 31,500 alqueires (76,230 hectares), dating back to 1770, when Pedro José Neto settled on part of that land for a while. In 1820, King João VI of Portugal donated the “Sesmaria do Cambuhy” to the strongman of his army in Brazil, Colonel Joaquim José de Morais Leme, who by inheritance passed it on to the Councillor of the Empire, Dr. Bernardino Avelino de Gavião Peixoto. The latter built a hydroelectric power station and established a few coffee farms.
In 1911, after 91 years and excluding areas previously sold, the Gavião Peixoto family sold the remaining 23,312.93 alqueires (56,417.29 hectares) to the Companhia Agrícola e Pastoril D’Oeste de São Paulo, owned by Dr. Carlos Leôncio de Magalhães (nicknamed Nhonhô Magalhães), who established several other coffee plots on the farm. On one occasion, Nhonhô Magalhães visited the United States, and upon his return, he decided to name the farm plots after the places he had visited. To this day, these locations are known by the names: Alabama, Niagara, Las Palmas, Florida, California, Virginia, and Arizona. The property was too large for only one person to manage. Consequently, after 13 years and with some plots of land having been sold, Nhonhô Magalhães sold Fazendas do Cambuhy in its entirety to the English company Brazilian Warrant.
The English, known for their organization, divided the area into 23 farms where they implemented very modern business concepts for the time, turning that land into a true agricultural complex (to produce mostly coffee and also cotton). In 1948, in addition to coffee, cotton and their processing, Fazendas do Cambuhy pioneered citrus farming in the municipality of Matão and the region, with 250 alqueires (605 hectares) comprised of 120,000 orange trees and 3,000 lemon trees. The area was irrigated by sprinklers, all in accordance with the rational method. These orchards began to bear fruit in 1952, a novelty in the midst of so many coffee plantations. Bold for the time, this initiative was very successful and sparked interest in citrus farming throughout the rural state of São Paulo. Cambuhy can therefore be considered the starting point of citrus farming in São Paulo.
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CAMBUHY AGRÍCOLA UNDER THE MANAGEMENT OF THE MOREIRA SALLES FAMILY
DECADES FROM 1950 TO 1980
1950s to 1980s
After acquisition and nationalization, Cambuhy went through four phases. The first was the coffee farm, a continuation of the English project. The second phase began in the 1970s when, due to the decline in coffee farming, Cambuhy underwent a complete transformation in which almost all coffee was eradicated and replaced with pastures. During this period, Cambuhy focused on cattle cow-calf production and had 16,000 head of Nelore cattle. However, given its low profitability at the time, a decision was made to replace pastures with orange orchards, marking the beginning of Cambuhy’s third phase in 1978.
Within four years, by mid-1981, 400,000 orange trees were planted. The choice of this crop was natural because the entire region was turning to citrus production, and juice processors were already being establishing nearby. In 1982, when Cambuhy had 8,000 hectares of pastures and 2,000 hectares of orange orchards, the management launched the guidelines of a work program, outlined over four years of study, travel, and research. From 1983 to 1985, Cambuhy was under the administrative leadership of Pedro Moreira Salles, who also played a role in setting the work plan. With the program implemented in 1986, Fazendas do Cambuhy was renamed Cambuhy Empreendimentos Agropecuários Ltda. and a new logo was conceived. During the same period, an Advisory Board was formed within the company. This board, through strategic planning, guided activities in pursuit of greater diversification and farm productivity, thereby consolidating Cambuhy’s fourth phase.
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CROP DIVERSIFICATION
90’S – “NEW TIMES”
THE 1990s – “NEW TIMES”
The previously mentioned strategic planning defined a new mix of crops to be established on the farm, including oranges, rubber, coffee, cattle, and grains. The same planning also set planting, productivity, cost, and revenue goals to be achieved in various stages by 1993.
Oranges were a natural fit for the São Paulo region, where main juice processors are mostly located. Rubber was a pioneer crop at the time, introduced to the region by Cambuhy. Coffee represented a return to the roots and was reintroduced with the expectation that the global market would offer free market niches with a demand for high-quality coffee.
Oranges, coffee, and rubber were perennial crops with good profitability, with the first two intended for export, as was soy. Rubber was targeted for the domestic market, as part of an effort to replace imports. Grain crops yielded lower profitability, leading to considerations about their replacement, which happened shortly thereafter.
In 1992, the group began operating Cambuhy MC Industrial, a processing plant to produce concentrated orange juice for export, distributing its product to more than 25 countries, with offices in Germany and Canada, and in Asia with Mitsui & Co.
In 1998, the group sold its stake in Cambuhy M.C. to the Votorantim Group. However, it still remained in the orange production business.
Cambuhy is highly productive, supported by technological investments, research development, and the improvement of field labor. During harvest months, over 2,000 people are employed. Cambuhy is a major producer of orange and latex. -
2000 – “PRESENT TIMES”
2000s – “PRESENT TIMES”
Coffee: due to high maintenance costs, unfavorable climatic conditions in the region, and low yield, coffee trees were eradicated in 2012..
Rubber: because of low profitability and high demand for labor, it was decided in 2016 to replace rubber with another crop.
Sugarcane: with the decision to quit coffee and rubber farming, in 2015 a search began for new business opportunities/crops that were well suited to the soil and climate, adhered to the company’s mission, vision and values, had synergy with the orange crop and low operational, financial, phytosanitary, and commercial risks. Based on these premises, the sugarcane project was implemented at Cambuhy.
Soybeans: in 2021, after the first sugarcane crop cycle, soybean was chosen for crop rotation in areas being replanted with sugarcane.
Cambuhy is currently a benchmark in productivity, sustainability, and technology in orange, sugarcane, and soybean crops. High yield, combined with quality and respect for people and the environment, reigns supreme in Cambuhy Agrícola’s management. In addition to the technological transformation taking place in all sectors, Cambuhy invests in the education of the families living on and around the farm, maintaining two schools on its premises, one municipal and the other complementary. Together, they offer education, foster culture, mental health, and nutrition.
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ALWAYS INNOVATE
ALWAYS INNOVATE
Keeping up with the exponential pace of cultural and technological change has always been part of our DNA. Now, more than ever, our technical team is dedicated to real-time data integration and transmission directly from the field to our monitoring center. The goal is to gain greater visibility of information for precise decisions to be made with a higher assertiveness rate in the search for excellence in product quality and higher yield.
HOW WE THINK
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OUR MISSION
To operate in the agricultural sector with high productivity, quality, and profitability, creating value through respect for people and the environment.
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VISION
To be a benchmark for agricultural productivity and profitability through excellence in management across production factors.
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VALUES
• Ethics
• Credibility
• Tecnological innovation
• Respect for people
• Meritocracy
• Environmental preservation