U.S. farmers taking part in 2010 Top Producer Frontier Study Tour, sponsored by the soybean checkoff, found road, bridge and rail improvements continue to take place in Brazil. But, some U.S. farmers now farming in Brazil told the group some planned infrastructure improvements have not started or have not been completed as originally scheduled. Traveling unpaved, dirt roads in much of the Brazilian countryside is a way of life in the major soybean-producing state in Brazil.

John Carroll, 29, of Carthage, Ill., represents one of many U.S. pioneers who have assembled investors over the last 15 years to break virgin land in the “cerrados” or savannah-like sections of Brazil. Carroll, shown here in one of his fields with U.S. farmers participating in the Top Producer Frontier Study Tour, already has plans to grow more cotton and fewer acres of soybeans when the 2011 crop season starts in Brazil.