Brazilian farmers have planted 3.1% of the estimated soybean area for the 2019/2020 crop, agribusiness consultancy AgRural said on Monday, blaming a lack of rain for the slowest start to the season in six years.
Chinese commodities trader COFCO said it expects a sharp drop in the number of soybeans it will source for export from Brazil this year due to an outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) in China that has hurt demand for animal feed.
Brazil’s soybean sowing season for the 2019-20 harvest is officially underway, but there might not be too many planters out in the fields just yet as conditions are extremely dry.
Privately run Chinese firms bought at least 10 boatloads of U.S. soybeans on Thursday, the country's most significant purchases since at least June, traders said, ahead of high-level talks next month aimed at ending a bilateral trade war that has lasted more than a year.
Brazil shipped 4.1 million tons of soybeans to China in August, down 40% year on year, according to the Secretariat of Foreign Trade of Brazil, or Secex. Though Secex didn’t provide any reason for the sharp drop, but trade sources cited rising competition from Argentina and African swine fever among the reasons for the decline.
Argentine farmers, anxious about an increasingly murky political outlook and economic turmoil, are turning toward soy over more expensive corn to cut costs, a shift that could impact next season’s harvest in one of the world’s top grain exporters.
The area in Brazil to be planted with soybeans in the 2019-20 season, which starts this month, will grow by the slowest pace in 13 years as a global trade war and swine fever in China cloud the outlook for farmers, according to analysts at AgRural.
The soybean harvest in Argentina for the 2018-19 crop year is almost complete, according to the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange. The forecast for total production was the second-highest in 19 years at 56 million mt, up 48% year on year due to a better than expected yield of 3.35 mt/hectare, BAGE said.
A Brazilian grain growers association has launched a hot line to encourage farmers to report practices on the part of Germany’s Bayer SA that potentially could be anti-competitive, according to statement sent to Reuters on Tuesday.
Brazilian soy exports to China will definitely decline this year as African swine fever in the world’s No. 2 economy cuts demand for the animal feed, but potential growth in meat exports would offset this, Brazil’s agriculture minister said on Monday.