US$ 7 billion: the place does the fortune of one of many richest girls in Brazil come from?

At the age of 90, the businesswoman is part of the select group of women present in the Forbes Brazil billionaires ranking in 2022; know its history (and see how to follow in its footsteps)

After releasing, in April, the 36th annual ranking of the richest people on the planet, Forbes recently published the list of the biggest billionaires in Brazil in 2022. In both yearbooks, the male predominance is notable.

To give you an idea, of the 284 names that make up the ranking of Brazilian billionaires in 2022, only 58 are women. “A modest cut, but an advance compared to six years ago, when the female presence was limited to 32 names”, says the magazine.

Among the figures who helped increase the female presence on this year’s list is Lucia Borges Maggione of the most notable personalities of the brazilian agribusiness. With an estimated fortune of $7.1 billion (about R$36.9 billion), the businesswoman appears in sixth place among the richest women in Brazil and occupies the 50th position in the general list of Brazilians.

But how did she get here? That’s what we tell you below.

From family business to one of the largest commodities companies in Latin America

Lucia Maggi is co-founder and board member of Amaggi, one of the world’s leading soybean exporters. The company’s history began in 1977, in São Miguel do Iguaçu (PR) – when Lúcia and her husband, André Maggi, founded Sementes Maggi, a company initially specialized in planting and trading soybeans.

Two years later, the couple acquired their first property in Mato Grosso and moved the organization’s headquarters to Rondonópolis, a city 210 km from the state capital. Gradually, the duo began to expand the business’s areas of operation and decided to invest in other commodities as well. Thus began the transformation of the company into one of the biggest empires of Brazilian agribusiness.

Since the death of her husband in 2001, Lucia Maggi has served as an advisory member of the company’s board of directors – which, in 2008, began its internationalization process with the opening of its first commercial office abroad, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Today under the name Amaggi, the company is responsible for processing and marketing grain, generating electricity and logistics operations – and is considered one of the main soybean exporters in the world. In the 2020 harvest, more than 1 million tons of grains and fibers were produced in approximately 258 thousand hectares.

Millionaire Factory?

The Maggi family is far from alone in building an empire based on agribusiness. Of the 290 names on the list of richest people this year, 54 are linked to the sector. This means that practically 20% of the country’s billionaires come from agriculture – which is not surprising, given the sector’s historical relevance to the country’s economy.

A locomotive of the national economy during the pandemic, agribusiness came to represent about 30% of the country’s GDP in 2021 and, it seems, continues to represent fertile ground for the emergence of millionaire careers and businesses. No wonder the sector was one of the 10 most cited by experts in the World Wealth Report, by consultancy Capgemini, which listed the areas most likely to generate millionaires in the next decade.

And the good news is that, due to the more technological nature of agriculture in recent years, it is no longer necessary to live in the countryside or have training in related areas (such as veterinary or agronomy) to enter the sector. Today, even located in large urban centers, engineers, economists, developers, administrators, communicators and professionals from different areas of training can find in agribusiness a opportunity to change careers and earn attractive salaries – which can reach around R$25,000 per month, according to data aggregator Glassdoor.

Source: Exam