When Simon Veldt’s father and his fellow Dutch immigrant farmers set up the Holambra II co-operative near Paranapanema in southeastern Brazil, the area was known as “Hunger Valley”. The co-operative, launched in the 1960s, built irrigation systems, introduced agricultural techniques and invested in equipment, changing the face of a district that had been populated by poor farmers subsisting on a few cattle and some corn and beans. “There was no electricity, there was nothing,” says Mr Veldt, president…