Braziliansoybeanisextremelyvigorous
notonlyinagriculturalterms,butalso
economicallyandsocially,andisstrongenough
tocontinueonanuninterruptedrisingtrend
A
highlight in Brazil’s strong agri-
culture,soybeankernels contin-
ue to show their extraordinary
vigor in agriculture, econo-
my and Brazilian society. In the
2016/17growingseason,arecordcropinpro-
duction was harvested and, although prices
dropped as a result of higher global supply,
it still brought in substantial revenue, which
surpasses all other crops, thus keeping the
oilseed on the productive top in the Country,
which, in turn, preserves its positionas glob-
al leader in exports of this kernel, a position
that used to belong to the leading producer,
theUnitedStates, up tosomeyears ago.
At field level alone, the gross income gen-
erated by the Brazilian soybean reached R$
116.31 billion in the highly valued 2015/16
cropandR$ 107.44 billion in the past season,
according to numbers released by the Na-
tional Food Supply Agency (Conab), in Sep-
tember 2017. As for the revenue generated
by the foreign sales of the Brazilian soybean
complex in 2016, it amounted to US$ 25.42
billion, keeping itspositionas amajor itemin
the Country’ exports. For 2017, the Brazilian
Vegetable Oil Industries Association (Abiove)
projects its increase to US$ 29.82 billion, rep-
resenting a rise of 24.1% in foreign business-
es that involve this kernel and 10.3% in soy
meal, alongwith3.4%inoil.
The segment, still according to data fur-
nished by Daniel Furlan Amaral, econo-
my manager at Abiove, at a lecture in Au-
gust 2017 in Campinas (SP), involves 216
thousand rural properties spread across the
The vitality of the
kernel
Although prices have dropped, soybean fields generate R$ 107.44 billion
Country, 1.5 million direct and indirect jobs,
and around 1.5% of Brazil’s Gross Domes-
tic Product (GDP). He also insisted on the im-
portance of the segment in the production
of meat, cooking and industrial oil, biodiesel
andchemical industryproducts, and that the
generation of jobs is fourfold when soybean
is transformed intomeat. He equally praised
the economic and environmental benefits
stemming from the production of biodies-
el, with a rise from8%to 10%of the blend of
biodiesel to fossil diesel
Therefore, even if in the coming year the
Brazilian soybean crop is not adjusted to a
slightly smaller level, after the high produc-
tivity rates reached in2017, theperspective is
for a repeat of the recordprocessingvolumes
and grain exports. The same holds true for
theplantedareaofthesummercrop,judging
fromtheinitialprojectionsregardingthenew
crop year, whilst for the coming years there
are good perspectives, where Brazil’s golden
kernel occupies an increasingly ampler and
privilegedposition, in theworldof food.
n
Inor Ag. Assmann
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