the strengthening of animal and plant health and inspection systems is another area that can also underpin the longer term development of domestic and international markets for the brazilian agricultural sector while short term benefits accrue to farmers from price support and credit programmes in the longer run sectorwide investments can have a higher payoff to farmers although brazil provides comparatively low support to farmers there may be opportunities to gradually transfer additional resources to public investment in the light of the expected improvements in agricultural productivity and the associated profitability of the sector