Brazil to produce near record harvest of soybeans: AgRural

Brazil-based agriculture consultancy AgRural said Thursday it expects the world’s biggest exporter of soybeans to produce 114 million mt during the 2017/18 harvest, near equalling a record high.

The company’s previous production estimate was 112.9 million mt.

“The 1.1 million mt increase… was due to positive adjustments in the productivity of the Midwest and Southeast regions and in the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina, where rainfall in December benefited the crops,” AgRural said in an emailed statement.

The consultancy expects yields to increase 1% to 54.6 sacks per hectare this season, compared with 56.1 sacks in the previous crop year.

At 114 million mt, the crop estimate will fall just short of the 2016/17 harvest, when 114.1 million mt was produced, largely due to a 2.5% increase in planted area.

The forecast comes just a few hours before Brazil’s food statistics agency is expected to revise upwards its estimate of the crop from 109.2 million to 112 million mt.

On Thursday, futures on the Chicago Board of Trade tumbled on fears that higher government estimates of Brazil's soybean crop will hit US exports to China this year.

Brazil’s record crop in 2016/17, which also carried a protein premium of 3-4%, meant that the US market share of soybean exports to China fell below a third during the first 11 months of 2017, according to government figures released last month.

AgRural's first weekly harvest survey will be released on Friday, which will give an indicator of the quality of the crop.