Jul 29, 2025
Grain Railroad in Northern Brazil Could be Operational in 10 Years
Author: Michael Cordonnier/Soybean & Corn Advisor, Inc.
The businessman, Guilherme Quintels, who is in charge of building the Ferrograo Railroad (Grain Railroad) from the city of Sinop in northern Mato Grosso to the Port of Miritituba in the state of Para, presented an update last week for political and business leaders. He indicated that the Minister of Transport is finalizing the environmental license, which is the last stage of the process. The National Land Transport Agency (ANTT) must then send it to the Federal Court of Auditors for final approval. If all goes according to schedule (and that is a big if), bidding on the project would start next March and the railroad could be operational by 2035.
The project has been delayed for 10 years due to action in the Brazilian Supreme Court filed by the PSOL party questioning the environmental impact of the railway in an indigenous area of Para.
To address those issues, the route of the railroad has been altered. The railroad will be on the margins of Highway BR-163 and bypass the Jamanxin National Park and it will not pass through any indigenous land. There will be no relocation of population and 60% of the route has already been deforested.
Even with the alterations to the railroad's route, there is no guarantee that the groups opposed to the railroad won't raise other objections. Environmental groups are opposed to the very idea of a railroad because they feel it will encourage more deforestation and the expansion of row crop production in the southern Amazon region even though the railroad would reduce CO2 emissions by 40% by changing the transportation matrix away from trucks.
Below is a schematic of the Ferrograo Railroad project. In the legend, yellow represents the 933-kilometer Ferrograo Railroad. Blue represents waterways where barging operations occur. Terminais Ferroviarios represents grain terminals on the railroad (there are four currently planned), and portos are the various ports on the Amazon River. MT stands for the state of Mato Grosso and PA stands for the state of Para.
The map below does not give you a sense of the scale of the project. Mato Grosso and Para are very big states. Combined, they are 80% as large as the United States east of the Mississippi River.
