Janaúba lies in the Norte de Minas region, where the cerrado savanna of the plateau runs up against the caatinga thorn-scrub of the Brazilian northeast. The municipality covers 2,189 square kilometers and holds about 72,000 people. Summers are hot, with daytime highs between 33 and 40 degrees Celsius in December and January. Winter mornings can surprise; under polar air masses pushing up from the south, temperatures have dropped as low as 6 degrees. The average annual temperature is 23, which disguises the range. What the landscape actually asks of people is patience with extremes.

The economy runs on ranching and irrigated agriculture. In 2006 the municipality counted 111,000 head of cattle, more than one per resident. Bananas are grown on about 2,170 hectares, alongside grapes, mangoes, and coconuts that take advantage of irrigation from wells and small reservoirs. Three hundred transformation industries employ more than 2,700 people, producing furniture, soft drinks, perfumes, clothing, and animal feed. A Dow Chemical facility makes cleaning products. The soils are poor in much of the municipality, and Janaúba has made an odd virtue of this by exporting sand as a construction material to the rest of the state, and by turning its abundant clay into bricks, roof tiles, and the distinctive ceramic pieces the region is known for.

The carnival here goes by a name the locals coined themselves, Janafolia, and it is one of the bigger pre-Lenten celebrations in the north of Minas. Bands play on stages set up in the central squares, and people who have left for São Paulo or Belo Horizonte come home for the long weekend. The Agricultural Fair, a trade show that runs alongside agricultural exhibitions, has been held for two decades and brings ranchers and equipment dealers from across the state. Both events tell the same story about the town, that the rhythm here is set by agricultural seasons and by the people who work them.

Janaúba's Municipal Human Development Index sits at 0.715, ranking it 478 of 853 municipalities in Minas Gerais. Life expectancy is around 69 years. The literacy rate is 80 percent, with the gap concentrated among older rural residents who, as the city notes in its own materials, can often write only their names. The city runs seven literacy courses for adults. It has 39 primary schools and 7 middle schools, with higher education in private institutions offering a handful of programs including agronomy. These are the kinds of statistics that can sound flat in summary and feel enormous when you meet them in a particular life. The town is working on both ends of that gap.

In winter the sky over Janaúba is so dry and clear that the horizon seems to go out further than it should. The town is 547 kilometers northeast of Belo Horizonte and 132 kilometers south of Montes Claros, the regional commercial hub. Neighboring municipalities ring it in a quiet grid: Francisco Sá, Porteirinha, Jaíba, São João da Ponte, Capitão Enéas. Most of them are smaller than Janaúba, which functions as the service center for a statistical microregion of thirteen municipalities and roughly 230,000 people. From the air, the town appears as a grid of low red-tile roofs set on a broad plateau, threaded by roads that run straight for a long way between one horizon and the next.