Safras & Mercado, a Brazilian consulting company for the agricultural sector, lowered its estimate for the soybean harvest 2017/18 to 114.57 million tonnes yesterday.
This is a small decrease compared to the last estimate in October, at that time it was 114.7 million tons; but in both cases this will be an all-time high for Brazil.
The reason for the adjustment is the expectation that the acreage will not be as big as previously expected. Overall, the farmers had but more soybeans grown, which was at the expense of maize. The soybean area in Brazil, at 35.49 million hectares, is now 5% larger than in the previous year.
The government statistics in Brazil expect a harvest of 114.1 million tons in this marketing season, as the weather so far offers the best conditions for another bumper harvest.
Text: HANSA Derivatives Trading GmbH /
