Brazil: soybean trading improves but remains at a slow pace

The selling pace of Brazil’s 2021/22 soybean crop registered a better advance in March compared to the previous month, but still remains below the five-year average for the period. Even though growers showed greater interest in selling in the first half of March, the decline in prices registered in the second half of the year made sellers back off, which prevented a better advance in sales. Regarding the volumes of the new crop (2022/23), very few deals were reported, with growers still reticent about starting to lock costs sooner than usual due to high input prices. The pace also remains below average for this time of the year.

According to a survey carried out by SAFRAS & Mercado, with data collected up to April 11, 56.6% of the 2021/22 Brazilian soybean crop were sold, up 8.1% from the percentage of the previous month (48.5%). The current percentage is equivalent to approximately 70.736 mln tons traded, from an estimated crop of 125.076 mln tons. In the same period of the previous year, the percentage was 67.4%, while the five-year average for the period is 57.4%.

For the new Brazilian soybean crop (2022/23), the percentage of sales reaches 9.8% of a still hypothetical crop, with an increase of 2.7% compared to the percentage of the previous month (7.1%). Our calculation was based on the production potential of the 2021/22 crop in November, before the weather problems that lowered production. The percentage is equivalent to approximately 14.144 mln tons of a hypothetical crop of 144.712 mln tons. The first estimate by SAFRAS & Mercado for the new Brazilian soybean crop (2022/23) traditionally takes place in July. Until then, this hypothetical production potential will be used for the calculation.

Tags: Brazil, prices, estimate, soybean crop, sales, percentage