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Brazil’s soybean harvest is off to a slow start

Brazil’s soybean harvest is off to a slower start than last year.

“In Brazil, the soybeans are 1.8 percent harvested–last year, it was six percent–so it’s off to a slower start,” says grain marketing consultant Dr. Michael Cordonnier, president of Illinois-based Soybean & Corn Advisor.

Cordonnier, who keeps close tabs on the South American corn and soybean crops, is still predicting a record Brazilian soybean crop. But he says a late soybean harvest could impact the size of that country’s second crop of corn—the safrinha crop.

“I’ll give you an example. The Mato Grasso Institute of Agricultural Economics projects a two percent increase in safrinha corn acreage, but a four percent decline in the statewide corn yield—because it’s going to be planted probably two or three weeks later than normal.”

But if the rainy season is extended, Cordonnier says, the corn will do fine. It depends on what kind of rainfall they get in April and May, he says.