Warehouses in Brazil are still full of soybeans, harvested just a few months before corn. In the state of Mato Grosso, soybean production was high this season, but at the same time sales are slower than usual, leaving warehouses with no space for corn, according to Cleiton Gauer, superintendent of the Mato Grosso Institute of Agricultural Economics (IMEA).
Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, the largest grain producer in the country, announced on Sunday that its hospital network has begun to collapse, as there is a lack of intensive care beds due to the increasing number of patients suffering from COVID-19.
The states of Sao Paulo and Mato Grosso led Brazilian beef exports in 2020, a record year for the country with total sales of 2,016 million tons. Data from SECEX (the Brazilian foreign-trade secretariat) compiled by ABRAFRIGO (the Brazilian meatpackers association) point out that São Paulo shipments totaled 439,900 tons, or 21.8% of the total, while shipments from Mato Grosso reached 407,700 tons or 20.2% of the total.
Brazil has temporarily halted beef exports to China following an atypical case of mad cow disease in leading farm state Mato Grosso, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. China, Brazil's largest beef importer by sales, spent US$1.5 billion on Brazilian beef last year, totalling 322,400 tons or almost 20% of all shipments, according to local beef exporters association Abiec.
The destruction of Brazil's Amazon rainforest reached its highest level in a decade this year, government data released on Friday showed, driven by illegal logging and the encroachment of agriculture in the jungle.
Tereza Cristina, tapped by President-elect Jair Bolsonaro to head Brazil's Agriculture Ministry, said on Wednesday the country could decide to abandon the Mercosur trade bloc if it failed to address inequality.
Brazil's Mato Grosso farmers are happy about their soybean planting progress this year, as they have finished sowing almost 90% of their soybean acres and are expecting an early harvest at the end of December.
Brazilian farmers sped up soy and corn plantings this week for the country’s next grain crop, under favorable weather conditions and a positive market outlook, despite a sharp fall in soybean futures in Chicago on Tuesday. Soybean planting in Brazil’s second-largest producing state of Paraná reached 9% of the expected final area this week, up 8 percentage points from last week and compared to only 1 percent at this time last year, as ample soil moisture allowed for a quick start of fieldwork.
Consultancy Agroconsult lowered its forecast for Brazil's so-called second corn crop to 55.2 million tons on Monday but left its export projection unchanged after a survey of fields in four states affected by planting delays and a drought. Agroconsult had estimated last month that the second crop, which farmers are currently harvesting, would total 57 million tons.
Brazilian prosecutors filed charges against the country’s Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi on Wednesday, accusing him of orchestrating a bribery scheme in 2009 when he was governor of Mato Grosso state. Prosecutor General Raquel Dodge filed charges at the Supreme Court, according to a written statement from the federal prosecutor’s office.