Brazil is poised to overtake the United States for the first time ever, as the world’s leading exporter of chicken, with a third of global trade, according to the latest statistics from FAO released this week.
Argentina’s second- biggest soybean producer Los Grobo, plans to transfer some assets to a new company and sell shares of the business in an initial public offering in Brazil.
Brazil will harvest this year a record crop of 158.7 million tons, 6% higher than last year’s 149.7 million tons, according to the latest release from the country’s Geography and Statistics Institute, IBGE.
Soybean crop prospects in Brazil and Argentina, the second- and third-biggest exporters of the oilseed behind the U.S., have improved, researcher Oil World said in a report Tuesday. Growers in Brazil will produce 73 million metric tons of soybeans, up from a record 68.7 million tons a year ago, and farmers in Argentina will harvest 49.5 million tons, up 1% from a prior estimate.
Argentine overseas sales of soybeans and by products reached 17.3 billion US dollars in 2010, equivalent to 25.4% of total exports, according to the latest report from the country’s statistics office INDEC. In 2009 the soy complex exports represented 23.3%.
Paraguay is experiencing a boom in corn with an area planted of over a million hectares compared to 600.000 hectares a year ago, according to the country’s Soybean Farmers’ Association president agronomist Francisco Regis Mereles.
China plans to invest ten billion US dollars in the production, storage and transport of soybeans in Brazil to ensure the supply of the commodity of which it is the world’s main importer, according to press reports in Beijing.
Paraguay’s 2010/11 soy bean crop covers 2.830.000 hectares (twice the area ten years ago) and the expected yield is between 2.900 and 3.100 kilos per hectare according to the latest satellite pictures in hands of the Paraguayan Chamber of Grains and Oilseed Exporters, Capeco.
So far the record yield dates back to 2003 with a national average of 2.915 kilos.
Latin America can help solve the global food crisis by expanding farm production, the World Bank said this weekend, and Colombia said it was on board with plans for an 'agricultural revolution'.
Argentine dock workers reached a wage deal on Friday and called off a three-day-old protest that paralyzed two major soy export terminals and stopped 20 grains ships from loading, a union leader said.