Brazil sees sharp farm growth, despite environment

By Raymond Colitt

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's farm sector will grow rapidly over the next decade and double some of its leading exports despite concerns over Amazon destruction and farmers' debt, the government said on Wednesday.

Critics say Brazil's rapidly expanding agricultural frontier has helped push farmers and loggers deeper into the world's largest rain forest, increasing destruction.

"We can still grow substantially without any deforestation," Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes told a news conference after presenting the government's 10-year farm sector outlook.

Brazil's production of ethanol derived from sugar cane would grow by 113 percent and exports of the biofuel by 270 percent over the next decade, the report said.

Brazil is to surpass the United States as the number one soy exporter, with foreign sales rising 40 percent to 50.5 million tons by the 2016/17 harvest.

"We see good prospects for strong growth," Stephanes said.

The government last month banned the sale of farm products from illegally deforested areas in the Amazon in an attempt to reverse months of increasing destruction.

It will impose fines for buying or trading goods such as beef or soy produced on illegally deforested properties.