Qualla: Nova Crixás

Nova Crixás: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danilo Bossanova, CC BY-SA 4.0. There are fifty-four cows for every person. That is the arithmetic of Nova Crixás, a municipality in northeastern Goiás where 690,665 head of cattle graze across 491,142 hectares of agricultural land and only 12,603 people live in between them. By 2006 the town ranked first in Goiás for beef cattle production. The population density is 1.73 inhabitants per square kilometer, among the lowest in the state. Drive any direction from the urban center and you will spend long stretches without seeing a house, a person, or anything other than pasture and a few clusters of cattle chewing their way across the horizon.

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Image: Danilo Bossanova | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nova Crixás: A Young Town

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danilo Bossanova, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nova Crixás is new. The first settler families arrived in the 1970s - the Alves Moreira family from Minas Gerais leading the way, buying land for agriculture and encouraging others to follow. The highway GO-174 was built around the same time, linking Goiânia far to the south with...

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Image: Danilo Bossanova | CC BY-SA 4.0

Nova Crixás: The Araguaia And Its Tributaries

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amanda Leite, CC BY-SA 3.0. The municipality lies in the valley of the Araguaia River, the second major tributary of the Tocantins and one of the great rivers of central Brazil. Three other waterways cross the area: the Peixe River, Lago Redondo, and Lago Maravilha. The Rio Crixás Mirim gives the town half ...

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Image: Amanda Leite | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nova Crixás: Cattle And More Cattle

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MTur Destinos, Public domain. The numbers for the cattle operation are staggering. Six hundred ninety thousand head of cattle. Three hundred fifty-one thousand hectares of natural pasture. Five hundred seventy tractors spread across 693 farms. Nearly three thousand people work directly on those farms, split b...

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Image: MTur Destinos | Public domain

Nova Crixás: Isolated

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MTur Destinos, Public domain. The town is far from everything. Mundo Novo is 42 kilometers north. Crixás is 67 kilometers southeast. Mozarlândia is 85 kilometers south. Goiânia, the state capital, is 370 kilometers away along a chain of highways that threads through Goianira, Inhumas, Itaberaí, and finally Ar...

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Image: MTur Destinos | Public domain

Nova Crixás: From Above

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Danilo Bossanova, CC BY-SA 4.0. Approach Nova Crixás from altitude and the patchwork below is mostly green - natural pasture broken by the thin lines of rivers and the occasional rectangle of cropland. The urban center is a small cluster near the highway, surrounded by ranches whose boundaries are marked by fen...

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Image: Danilo Bossanova | CC BY-SA 4.0