While South America is expected to produce large crops of corn and soybeans, it’s not without challenges. Dr. Michael Cordonnier, an agronomist with Soybean and Corn Advisors, Inc., says despite wet weather in parts of Brazil, farmers did harvest some soybeans.
“Soybeans are maybe 17-18 percent harvested, and the Safrinha corn is maybe 16 to 17 percent planted,” says Dr. Cordonnier. “I think we’ll probably leave my Brazil soybean estimate unchanged at 170 million tons. Now, the Safrinha corn is a tough one to call. Planting is going to be delayed for sure. There are only three weeks left in February. They may be hard-pressed to be 50 percent planted by the end of the month, and then the yields are going to depend on when the rainy season ends. Now, I have a neutral-to-lower bias. Certainly, the wet weather has continued to delay everything in Brazil.”
While parts of Brazil are too wet, others are on the other end of the spectrum. “Yes. Far southern Brazil, especially Rio Grande do Sul, is very dry, so it’s like a tale of two halves,” says Dr. Cordonnier. “The northern half is overly wet, and far southern Brazil is overly dry and the question is, will the good yields in the north compensate for the lower yields in the south? The answer is probably yes. There is concern about quality issues in Brazil. I have not had any reports yet, but everybody’s concerned about if they get a stretch of rain, like 4, 5, 6, or 7 days, and it’s just soybeans sitting out there in the rain, you’ve got some quality issues.”
Despite being wet in northern Brazil, they haven’t seen many fungal diseases yet. “Not anything extraordinary, yet. But you always worry about fungal diseases when it stays extra wet,” says Dr. Cordonnier. “Now, there’s no rust up in that part of the country, so that was a good thing. So, I do expect some fungal diseases, but the weather has been a lot of moisture, overcast, and cloudy, so that may be a little bit of a trimming of the yield, but they are still going to be good. It’s still going to be a record type of yield in Matto Grosso and Goias because they just had so much rainfall so far this growing season, so we have not seen any big problems with the diseases as of yet.”
Story courtesy of NAFB News Service
