A
bumper crop in 2017, with
a new expansion in cultivat-
ed area and favorable weath-
er conditions, resulted into a
crop of 114 million tons of soy
inBrazil, second largest global producer and
leading exporter. The kernel is the Country’s
mainagriculturalproductand,includingthe
processedproducts (meal andoil), accounts
for 14.6% of the total revenue coming from
exports, some R$ 31.7 billion last year. For
2018, although the comparative facesmuch
higher levels and if it depended on the be-
havior of the climate, at the beginning, the
expectation for numbers close to the previ-
ous seasonwas renewed.
From 2016 to 2017, the area devoted
to soybean went up nearly 20 percent, ac-
cording to the official numbers released by
the National Food Supply Agency (Conab).
Processing increased about 5 percent, with
a4-percent evolution in the supplyof deriv-
atives, meal and oil, according to the Bra-
zilian Vegetable Oil Industries Association
(Abiove). With availability of the oilseed on
the rise and soaring demand from abroad,
particularly in China and other Asian coun-
tries, Brazil’s soy exports were up 32 per-
cent in the past year, consolidating its lead-
ership in this trade.
The past soy crop was also abundant in
theothercountrieswherethecerealisgrown,
the leader United States and our neighbor
country Argentina, third biggest produc-
er. Due to this, the stock/final consumption
reached record levels in the world, a scenar-
io that causedprices todrop inBrazil in2017,
according to studies conducted by the Cen-
terforAppliedStudiesonAdvancedEconom-
ics (Cepea), of the Luiz de Queiroz College of
Agriculture (Esalq), a division of the Univer-
sity of São Paulo (USP). In the regions close-
ly watched by the Center, farm gate prices
dropped14.6percent, onaverage.
At global level, at the beginning of the
2017/18 growing season, researchers de-
tected supply similar to the previous sea-
son, while demand continued on a rising
trend, but the final stock/consumption
relation was to suffer only a negligible
change. Therefore, without any expres-
Full
load
Main product inBrazilian agribusiness
reaches record volume in the current season,
around 110million tons in 2018
Sílvio Ávila
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