Why we created Feeding the World – Mercosur Business News
Global coverage of Mercosur—Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay— particularly around the agrifood chain, too often arrives filtered through external lenses, shaped largely by English-speaking stakeholders. While the region has a strong voice of its own, cultural and linguistic barriers have long limited its ability to project that voice beyond its borders.
As a Uruguayan international business specialist trained in the UK (BA Hons Economics, University of Durham, 2002), Gabriela Castro-Fontoura has spent nearly 25 years building bridges between her home region and the UK, Europe and the wider world. After decades of seeing how better communication drives deeper understanding, she has taken on the ambitious challenge of launching a multi-channel platform that tells Mercosur’s story from within—in English, but on its own terms.
Feeding the World – Mercosur Business News gives the region’s producers, innovators and institutions a space to explain not just what they do, but how and why they do it—while also engaging with how those stories resonate globally. Because understanding is not a soft outcome; it is a prerequisite for cooperation, and ultimately, for peace.
What value does this platform bring?
* It builds bridges and counters polarisation.
* It helps demystify agricultural production in the world’s leading food-producing region.
* It fosters critical thinking and open, fact-based dialogue beyond political agendas.
* It brings a human dimension to food production.
* It gives Mercosur’s producers, suppliers and stakeholders a credible global voice.
* It highlights positive, often overlooked stories—particularly around sustainability.
This is a female-led initiative grounded in real-world experience: a UK-trained Uruguayan economist who has spent a quarter of a century “walking the walk.” It combines passion for the region with a capacity for critical inquiry, diplomacy with the courage to ask difficult questions.
With a clear gender perspective and a commitment to engaging younger generations—especially around genuine sustainability—this is a timely and forward-looking platform. At a pivotal moment for Mercosur’s relationships with the European Union, the UK, the United States and the Asia-Pacific, it offers something rare: a balanced, informed and authentically regional voice with global reach.