By Nayara Figueiredo
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A relentless drought in Rio Grande do Sul continues to limit Brazil’s soybean output potential this year and risks altering analyst estimates that the country will produce a historically large crop above 150 million tonnes.
In the worst case scenario, output there could fall by 40% to 12.6 million tonnes, a large drop from the state’s 21 million tonne production potential, said Decio Teixeira, vice-president of Rio Grande do Sul’s farmer group Aprosoja-RS.
He said in the previous season, the state’s output was below 10 million tonnes, as the weather was also extremely dry.
“The difference is that last year we had more than 60 days without rain. This year the rain came, but very sparsely and in homeopathic doses,” Teixeira said.
Conab, Brazil’s food supply and statistics agency, estimated that soy farmers nationally would reap 152.88 million tonnes of the grain this season, up 21.8% after last year’s drought spoiled a lot of the crop.
From Conab’s perspective, Rio Grande do Sul-based farmers would reap 18.98 million tonnes, a number above farmers’ and analysts’ forecasts.
From the town of Carazinho, farmer and director of Rio Grande do Sul’s agricultural federation Farsul said this season there are farmers who will harvest well and others who will suffer terrible losses.
In the previous cycle, performance was mostly negative for all.
“The best crops are in the regions further to the northeast of the state and north, and the worst are in parts of the northern region, towards the west,” Farsul’s Paulo Roberto Vargas said.
In his own area, corn yields are seen at between 50 and 60 bags per hectare, compared to up to 200 bags per hectare in years of full harvest.
For soy, the current average estimate is 40 bags per hectare, versus 70 bags in a good years, Farsul’s Vargas said.
(Reporting by Nayara Figueiredo; Writing by Ana Mano; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
