The soybean harvest in Brazil is almost finished. Dr. Micheal Cordonnier is an agronomist with Soybean and Corn Advisor, and he says the crop is a big one.
He says; “The soybeans in Brazil right now are about 95 percent harvested. The only state left to harvest is Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state in Brazil, and they should wrap it up here within the next one to two weeks. The yields are good. It’s going to be a record crop. They had lots of rain up in the central part of the country and did very well. They still had some drought problems in the far southern part of the country, so that was a little bit disappointing down there, but it’s ending up as a record crop.”
Harvesting in Argentina isn’t yielding good results because of severe drought weren’t as good. Cordonnier said; “The soybeans were 20 percent harvested late last week, and corn was 18 percent. I left all my estimates unchanged, but I have a neutral-to-lower bias for both. It’s half a crop in Argentina for both corn and soybeans. And the farmers are not selling their soybeans. There are reports that the crushers in Argentina are buying beans from Brazil, which are cheaper than domestic supplies, and the farmers don’t want to sell because inflation is like 105 percent. And they had this new soybean dollar program where they gave a preferred exchange rate if you sold your soybeans for export, but the preferred rate isn’t good enough.”
Attention now turns to Brazil’s second corn crop, which he says is off to a good start. He said; “It got planted a little bit later than normal because the soybeans were harvested later than normal, especially in southern Brazil. Now it’s getting drier up in Central Brazil, but the corn up there is far enough along that maybe one or two more rains are all it needs. If they don’t get any more rain, it might trim it a little bit. In the southern locations, it got planted late. The corn is in vegetative development right now. It’s starting to pollinate, and the concern there is if they get a frost before maybe mid-June, it could impact the corn crop.”
Farmers in Brazil aren’t selling a lot of soybeans right now as prices have slumped. Despite the slow sales, Cordonnier says it won’t delay Brazil from getting soybeans into the world market; “I don’t think so because they have so much of it. It’s still gonna be a record crop, and if they sell slower than normal, they still have a lot to sell. And all the ports in Brazil are operating at full capacity, and they need to do that to move the soybeans, and there’s a record crop of corn coming on as well. And I just was writing an article about these northern ports on the Amazon River in North and Northeastern Brazil. They’re doing gangbuster sales. They’re just moving a lot of stuff, more so than ever before.”
For more information, go to soybeansandcorn.com.
