In the heart of the Amazon rainforest, workers are preparing to dig a vertical shaft as wide as a subway tunnel half a mile down into the ground.

It isn’t gold or oil hidden here in a grassy clearing between indigenous lands, but fertilizer—something arguably just as precious to this vast farming nation.

As global trade tensions flare, Brazil has replaced a growing share of U.S. agricultural exports to China, which has shunned American soybeans in response to Trump administration tariffs. The Trump administration’s imposition of 50% tariffs on Brazil this year raised the stakes for the country’s globally dominant agriculture industry to carry Latin America’s largest economy through the trade war.

Read more in the Wall Street Journal here.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.