Brazil Soybean Crop to Rise to Record?
September 28, 2009 Bloomberg
Brazil, the world’s biggest soybean producer after the U.S., may harvest a record soybean crop next year as farmers shy away from planting corn after prices plunged, FCStone Group Inc.’s Gonzalo Terracini said.
Above-average rains in major producing regions will also help boost yields for soybean crops that growers started planting this month, said Terracini, an FCStone broker based in Campinas, Brazil. “We’re expecting a really big crop. Rains are helping.”
Corn prices have plunged 18 percent this year, and more than 5.5 percent for soybeans, as declining oil prices pare demand for ethanol made from the grain. Brazilian soybean crops are benefiting from above-average rains in center-western and eastern regions and parts of the South of Brazil, the Agriculture Ministry’s said on September 23.
On the Chicago Board of Trade Monday, November of 2010 soybeans closed at $8.93, down 13 cents from Friday’s close; December 2010 corn closed at $3.87, virtually unchanged.
The South American country’s soybean output may rise to as much as 64 million metric tons next year, more than the record 60 million tons reaped in 2008, Renato Sayeg, a broker at Tetras Corretora in Sao Paulo, said in a telephone interview.
Growers in Mato Grosso state, which produces about 30 of Brazil’s soybeans, have already planted 2.1 percent of their crop to be harvested next year, compared with 1.3 percent in the same period a year earlier, according to data on the state agricultural research agency’s Web site.
Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry cut its forecast for soybean output this year to 57.09 million tons on September 8, down from last month’s estimate of 57.11 million. Farmers last year produced 60.02 million tons of the oilseed, according to the ministry.
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