The 2007/2008 crop in Brazil, with 143.87 million tonnes picked, growth of 9.2% over the previous season, confirms the tendency of growth of Agribusiness exports. The National Food Supply Company (Conab) estimates exports of 52.17 million tonnes of maize, soy, cotton and beans up to the end of the year. Apart from that, analysts say that the country should continue breaking production records.
"The Brazilian crop is going to maintain this tendency of breaking records. Analysing the results of recent years, the cultivated area grows less than production," said the economist of the Brazilian Rural Society (SRB), André Diz, to whom Brazilian agriculture is gaining in technology, which reflects the growth of production with no need to expand the cultivated area.
According to figures supplied by Conab, maize crops reached 58.59 million tonnes, growth of 14% over the previous crop. Soy had growth of 2.8%, a percentage that is equivalent to 1.66 million tonnes.
With regard to wheat, with 3.82 million tonnes picked, there was growth of 71.2%. According to Diz, these commodities present very high prices on the foreign market, which ends up generating producer interest in dedicating greater areas to the plantation of grain. "Brazil will certainly expand exports of grain," he said.
According to the crop evaluation manager at Conab, Eledon Pereira, exports forecasted by the organisation for this year are 25.8 million tonnes of soy in grain, 13.2 million tonnes of soy chaff, 10 million tonnes of maize, 1.12 million tonnes of soy oil and 520,000 tonnes of cotton lint.
"Conab had already announced this growth early this year, and this is just confirmation of our export forecast," he said.
Currently, soy, maize and rice farming represents 90% pf grain production in Brazil. "The soy complex is the export cash cow," stated the market management technician at the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB), Marcos Matos. According to him, the appreciation of commodities on the foreign market also reflected in a record crop.
However, Matos says that, despite the growth and the good conditions of Brazilian production, the country faces logistics problems to ship abroad. "Brazil has all possible chances to consolidate itself as the main exporter, but we must look ahead," said the technician, who pointed out several critical points internally, like queues in ports, poor highways, high production costs and a heavy tax burden.
From January to July, exports of maize, soy, beans and cotton have already reached US$ 13.29 billion. The main buyers from Brazil are China and India. The agribusiness trade balance, in this period, totalled US$ 40.11 billion in exports.
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