Brazil has just ended the third-driest summer in a century, with very little rain in March and April. The traditional dry season has just begun with low humidity, affecting the main period of sugarcane growth in the central-southern region of the country for the 2021/22 harvest. With the deterioration of crops, trading companies and analysts are reducing their projections for the season. The American consultancy StoneX revised its estimates and indicated that the most likely scenario is that the fall in the region’s harvest will be 5.8%, or 35.3 million tons compared to the previous harvest, for a total of 570.2 million tons, a level close to that of the 2014/15 and 2018/19 cycles. The 2014/15 season was marked by a water crisis, mainly in São Paulo, which affected the water supply of several municipalities, causing producers to lose about 6 tons per hectare from the yield of sugarcane fields in the central-southern region. In the probable scenario for 2021/22, StoneX estimates a yield of 76.3 tons per hectare, down 6.8%. In the worst scenario outlined by the consulting firm, the sugarcane harvest will be 567.2 million tons, down 6.3%. In a more conservative loss calculation, StoneX sees a harvest of 578.1 million tons.
Sources: Valor/Datamar News