Articles By Reese Ewing

The first yield reports from Brazil’s third-largest soybean producing state of Rio Grande do Sul are down nearly 11% from last season’s record, and results are expected to deteriorate further as harvest reaches the drought hit southern portion of the state.

Soybean producers and agronomists are reporting the first signs of losses to disease and spoilage because of the relentless rains that are falling on Brazil’s 2017/18 crop now in the peak of harvest.

Brazil's highway police has allowed some grain trucks backed up 80 kilometers on Brazil’s northern soybean export highway to begin traveling again, but other segments of the road remain blocked after getting washed out by heavy rains over a week ago.

A strike by Paraguayan truckers that started on Monday remained in force Thursday and has begun to concern the country’s soybean farmers who are struggling to get their crops to storage facilities and ports.

Brazilian railway operator Rumo will open a new 7.5 million mt per year fertilizer terminal in Mato Grosso state in April, as producers in the remote hinterland state enter the peak negotiation period for securing inputs for the next grain crop that starts planting in September.

Brazilian President Michel Temer has announced the government-controlled bank Banco do Brasil will release 12 billion reais ($4 billion) in subsidised credit to farmers for the planting, upkeep, harvest, transport, storage and sale of crops.

Wet, cloudy weather is dragging down soybean yields in Brazil’s second largest soybean producing state of Parana, local farmers, cooperatives and officials have said.

The center-west state of Mato Grosso accounted for 62.5% of Brazil’s record corn exports in 2017, according to a report by the state’s farm economics institute Imea, although corn exports are likely to fall this year due to late planting of the crop.

Brazil’s main northern export terminals nearly doubled their shipments of the country’s record soybean harvest in 2017, carving out a larger share of the market from the traditional southern ports like Santos and Paranagua.

Forward sales of Brazil’s 2017/18 soybean crop reached 31% of the expected crop by the end of last week, trailing the 34% by this time last year, as prices of the commodity remain weak, agribusiness consultants Franca Junior said on Wednesday.

Brazil’s national association of soybean producers has filed a case in federal court to annul biotechnology giant Monsanto’s patent on Intacta soybeans, it said Tuesday.

Brazil may revoke a 20% import tariff on ethanol that went into effect in September as local fuel prices soar to record territory, Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi said.

Farmers in Brazil’s biggest soybean producing state of Mato Grosso began harvesting early maturing fields in the past days with reports of good yields.

Construction of the biggest grain logistics terminal in the centre-west state of Goias in Brazil that will serve the country’s Norte-Sul Railway will be complete in the next six months, according to Valec Engenharia, the government-run company in charge of railway development.

The main grain highway BR-163, on which nearly 15% of Brazil’s corn and soybean exports flow to terminals in the Amazon basin state of Para, was cast into chaos over the weekend with the return of heavy spring rains.

Brazil is forecast to crush a record 43 million mt of soybeans in 2018 as the mandatory biodiesel blend heads for B10 in March and the RenovaBio biofuels stimulus bill awaits President Michel Temer’s signature to become law.

Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry on Wednesday published guidelines for local flour mills to import wheat from Russia, as the country struggles with declining domestic production of the grain in recent years.

Agricultural loans in Brazil reached 64.6bn reais ($19.4bn) since the start of the 2017-2018 crop year in July through November, up from last year’s 53.5bn reais as weaker soybean and corn prices push commercial farmers out of less favourable barter deals and into subsidized government credit.

Lawmakers sitting on a Senate committee in Brazil have passed a constitutional amendment that could trigger a tax on exports of soybeans and other agricultural commodities in a move that the local farming sector says would be disastrous if passed by a full floor vote