The record crop of 239.8 million tons of grain expected this year has helped keep consumer food prices steady, said Carlos Alfredo Guedes, manager of the Agricultural Coordination of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). The result is 108.1K tons higher than expected in July, according to the August Systematic Agricultural Production Survey (LSPA). Farmers will harvest more wheat (9.5%), barley (20.5%), oats (10.7%) and sorghum (13.9%) this year. National agricultural production is expected to surpass 1.4 million tons over the super harvest obtained in 2017, the last record recorded so far. The weather was better in 2017 than now in 2019, but this time there was an increase in planted area, Guedes explained. The expected result in August is unlikely to change much by the end of the year, the researcher said. He estimates that about 7.5 million tons of grain still in the field is missing, including wheat and other winter crops, third crop beans and second crop corn. The expected advance in the Brazilian crop is pulled by corn, which has higher yields than soybean per hectare cultivated.
“Per hectare, we produce much more corn than soy. As we increased corn this year, there was an increase in production (in tons), ”explained Guedes. “One hectare gives almost twice as much corn as it gives soy,” he added. Advances in corn exports helped sustain grain prices at a level still attractive to growers, who invested in increasing acreage, according to the IBGE. With the growth of exports, the supply of corn in the country was not as abundant, but still sufficient to avoid price pressures, despite the expanding trend of the corn ethanol manufacturing industry in Mato Grosso, said the IBGE researcher.
Source: Portos e Navios