Brazil soybean harvest pace still at 10-year low on rain: Agrural

Curitiba-based Brazilian agriculture consultancy Agrural have called Brazil’s soybean harvest “the slowest in ten years” as...

Curitiba-based Brazilian agriculture consultancy Agrural has declared Brazil’s soybean harvest is still “the slowest in ten years” as progress inched up by six percentage points on the previous week to now stand at 15% complete, well behind the 31% attained at the same point in 2020.

In a weekly update, the agency noted that the pace has accelerated, but that rain remains the primary obstacle slowing progress making “the 15% harvested so far… the lowest index for mid-February in ten years, impacting logistics and exports.”

With weather outlooks still calling for more rain into the early days of March, farmers have been forced to pick up the harvest pace despite the conditions “even in areas where the grain is in excess of moisture, in an attempt to avoid losses of quality later on,” the report said.

Further south in states such as Mato Grosso do Sul and Rio Grande do Sul, which typically only deliver one crop per season, Brazil’s bean harvest is yet to get into gear after delayed planting and dry conditions have slowed the development of the crop and lengthened the crop cycle.

For those states that support a second, safrinha crop, the delay to the soybean harvest is having a knock-on effect on corn planting, with the Centre South region of the country 24% sown with the grain as of February 18.

While that represents a significant 11-percentage point increase week-on-week, Agrural noted that progress is lagging well behind the 51% recorded at the same point of 2020.

The agency has forecast Brazilian bean production at 131.7 million mt but is expected to revise that estimate later this week.

What to read next
US corn sales for the 2024-25 season were reported at 1.65 million tonnes in the week to February 6, up by 12% from the previous week and by 20% from the prior four-week average, landing within the USDA’s expected range of 800,000-1.7 million tonnes, USDA data showed on Thursday, February 13. Much of the increase […]
Brazilian corn exports amounted to 3.59 million tonnes in January, down by 26.3% from the same month last year. Meanwhile, soybean shipments fell by 62.4% to 1.07 million tonnes, according to customs weekly data on Monday, February 10. In January last year, Brazil exported 4.87 million tonnes of corn and 2.85 million tonnes of soybeans. […]
Investors in the US corn and soybean markets trimmed shorts while amassing longs in the week to Tuesday January 14, pushing the corn net long to the highest-level since May 2022 and moving soybeans from a net short to a net long for the first time in more than a year, data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) showed late on Friday January 17.
The recently concluded EU-Mercosur free-trade agreement, after 25 years of negotiation, is expected to have limited immediate impact on South American agricultural exports to Europe.
The French corn harvest advanced by 7 percentage points in the week to Monday November 25, with 89% of the total planted area now harvested, according to the latest weekly report from FranceAgriMer.
Argentina’s soybean sowing area estimate for the 2024-25 crop was raised by 0.6%, to 17.9 million hectares, while the wheat output was projected at 17.6 million tonnes, the country's Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (SagyP) monthly report showed on Thursday November 21.