Centro-Oeste

The Brazilian interior, opened by an agricultural revolution and a capital built in a field. The centre-west is cerrado, a vast tropical savanna long thought agriculturally worthless because its soil is acidic and poor - until Embrapa's research from the 1970s corrected it with lime and developed soy varieties adapted to the tropics, converting the region into one of the largest grain and beef producers on earth within a generation. That transformation is among the most significant agricultural changes of the twentieth century and is rarely discussed outside Brazil. The region was previously known for the bandeirantes, slave-raiding expeditions out of Sao Paulo that pushed Portuguese claims far west of the Tordesillas line, and for the gold rushes into Goias and Mato Grosso. Brasilia was built here from nothing between 1956 and 1960 to draw development inland, laid out by Lucio Costa and built by Oscar Niemeyer. The Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland, occupies the southwest and holds extraordinary wildlife. Indigenous reserves including the Xingu are in the north. Brasilia is a World Heritage site. The region covers Goias, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul and the Federal District, with around seventeen million people. The cerrado is the most biodiverse savanna on earth and is being cleared faster than the Amazon. Goias Velho preserves a colonial gold town. Brazil is now the world's largest soy exporter, mostly from here. The Pantanal floods seasonally across an area the size of England. Cuiaba sits near the geographic centre of South America. Sertanejo music comes from this region.

• Existed: 1722 CE – present
• Type: Entity