MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Brazil heading for a record crop of 100 million tons of soybeans
March is the main month for harvesting. Soybeans are booming in Brazil, with this year’s crop expected to be 15% larger than two years ago. 
The strong dollar is constraining U.S. exports while Brazil’s Real is weaker which means U.S. soy exports are forecast to shrink while Brazil’s soar by nearly 13%. As the soybean harvest gets under way in Brazil, analysts are having a clearer picture of whether the forecast record-setting crop will hit the century mark of 100 million tons despite hot and dry weather in Mato Grosso and northeastern Brazil as pods set and fill.
Growers planted nearly 4% more land to soybeans than last season. With slightly above-average yields, that would bring a crop that easily exceeds the 96.2 million tons of 2014/2015, says USDA.
March is the main month for harvesting. Soybeans are booming in Brazil, with this year’s crop expected to be 15% larger than two years ago.
Second to the U.S. as a soybean grower, Brazil is on track to thrash America as the top exporter. Usually, it’s a fairly close race between the nations.
However the strong dollar is constraining U.S. exports at the same time Brazil’s real currency is weaker with the result that U.S. soy exports are forecast to shrink while Brazil’s soar by nearly 13%.
In the end, Brazil could ship as much as 11 million more tons of the oilseed than U.S. exporters. “China will remain the main destination for Brazilian soybeans,” says the U.S. agriculture attaché in Brasilia.
Brazil’s soybean industry formally requested that the Foreign Ministry consider a WTO challenge of U.S. farm supports, specifically U.S. weather insurance and price guarantees, wrote the attaché early this year.
The industry is squeezed by high production costs and low world soybean prices, exacerbated by economic unrest at home. Brazil won a WTO challenge of U.S. cotton subsidies as trade distorting, which forced Congress to rewrite the cotton program in the 2014 farm law.
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Read all comments“Brazil is on track to thrash America as the top exporter”: Great news indeed! But where is the infrastructure and the adequate port-facilities to export efficiently and cheaply?
Feb 22nd, 2016 - 10:50 am 0Exactly. Brazil's seaport infrastructure is beyond criticism, I've been hearing talk of port improvement for more 20 years, but more specifically from the Lula-thief, who back in 2007 'invented' an investment programme known as the PAC (programme for the acceleration of growth), which in 2 phases, has cost Brazil some R$ 750 billion (USD 350 million at the exchange rate at the time), but the only thing that one can see happening, is widespread corruption and and no progress worth talking of. And meanwhile, the lousy infrastructure just contributes to increasing the cost of Brazilian exports.
Feb 22nd, 2016 - 04:01 pm 0El fervor de la memoria.
Feb 22nd, 2016 - 05:22 pm 0En el viñedo
una luz
reaparece
como el
canto de un
diamante
en el limpido
destino.
Francesco Sinibaldi
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