MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Excellent rain-timing anticipates record crops in Brazil of coffee and soy

Even when many farmers left corn for soy, a bountiful harvest of maize is also expected

Brazil's coffee crop may beat the 48.48 million bag record this year, the country's crop supply agency said in a report which also raised forecasts for the newly-begun soybean harvest.

The world's biggest coffee grower will produce 45.89-48.66 million bags of beans in 2010-11, an increase of up to 23% on this year's harvest and potentially beating the record set eight years before, Conab said.

The rise is down in part to coffee's biennial cycle, which sees periods of lower production, such as the 2009-10 year which ends in March, followed by “on” years of greater output.

However, it also follows Brazil's heavy rains in the second half of 2009 which, while interrupting the sugar cane harvest, encouraged coffee trees to grow extra foliage.

Conab also raised its estimate of the 2009-10 soybean crop in Brazil, the second-ranked producer after America, by 600,000 tonnes to 65.16 million ton, also a record. The revision was in part credited to rains which had, in the south, “favoured flowering and grain formation”.

Conab pegged the corn harvest at 50.49 million tons, 350,000 tons higher than its previous estimate, if below last year's record 51million-ton crop.

Higher soybean prices have encouraged farmers to switch from corn to soybeans, a trend highlighted on Wednesday by Monsanto in noting a decline in seed sales. The revisions had been foreseen by analysts, and follow encouraging reports from the early harvest.