Brazil’s dry outlook raises late soybean planting, safrinha corn fears – AgriCENSUS

10 de setembro 2019 | Na Mídia

Persistent hot, dry weather across Brazil’s key planting regions with little rain expected in the coming weeks has raised the first fears that soybean plantings could be pushed back, with any delay potentially having consequences for the country’s subsequent safrinha corn crop.

States in the south of Brazil have seen good rain, which is likely to assist the first corn crop plantings, but forecasts for the key Mato Grosso region – Brazil’s biggest soybean and corn producer – show little to no rain for at least the next two weeks.
“I’m not saying they’re late already since the bulk of soybean planting is in October, but the forecast maps don’t look good,” Daniele Siqueira of Curitiba-based Agrural told Agricensus, with the outlook raising fears for farmers.

Last year, fast-emerging Chinese soybean demand came as US-China trade relations deteriorated, incentivizing early planting of soybeans with Mato Grosso’s starting planting in the second full week of September, according to data from state agriculture agency IMEA.

While Brazil delivered a 117 million mt crop, the early start for soybeans may have dented the crop’s prospects, with sources saying some of the earlier planted beans suffered the lowest yields.

“There might be a delay and that is raising concerns at the moment… last year farmers anticipated planting and it did not work well, so this year I think it is going back to average years,” a market source said.

However, it was of more significance for Brazil’s second corn crop – the safrinha – which is grown on land cleared after the first soybean harvest has been gathered in and where early harvesting of beans meant corn was perfectly positioned to capitalize on an earlier planting window.

“If we have delays in the soybean planting or harvest, the first victim is cotton, because in Mato Grosso cotton has to be planted in January. Corn has a wider planting window, but if there is a major delay, then the corn planting is also affected,” Siqueira said.

Later planting potentially exposes Mato Grosso’s second corn crop to dry conditions during the key pollination stage, and then frosts through the later development stages, all of which could hit yields in the upcoming 2019/20 corn crop.