April 1, 2011
 

Brazil's soy season shortens

 

 

As the winter corn and cotton crops in Brazil become more popular, the soy season is affected because it becomes shorter and more concentrated.

 

However, farmers expose themselves to greater crop risks by using shorter-cycle beans, planted in more concentrated periods to allow time for a second crop.

 

"The problem is when you get a dry spell, the shorter-cycle soy do not have time to recover," said Jose Cicero Aderaldo, superintendent at the Cocamar cooperative in northwestern Parana, where soy harvesting is now typically squeezed into 30 days.

 

The timetable was tighter than ever this season after dry weather in September and October delayed soy planting and further concentrated the harvest.

 

As wet weather hampered the soy harvest in the top-producing centre-west region, the struggle to plant winter crops in the recommended sowing period became impossible for some.

 

While cotton has proven to be a popular winter crop this season because of sky-high prices, the big growth has been in corn planting. During the last decade, second-crop corn production rose fivefold and, this season, is estimated at almost 22 million tonnes, or 40% of Brazil's total output.

 

Brazilian farmers discovered that investing in technologically advanced winter corn crops brings reliable yields and financial returns. However, the corn must be planted at the start of the traditional soy harvesting season in February and March.

 

The solution for farmers like Marco Bruschi Neto is to plant exclusively short-cycle beans, which typically harvest after 120 days in his region in Maringa, northern Parana.

 

"We had a scare in January with 15 days of dry weather. Thankfully, the rains returned. Most of the 500 hectares were threatened, though," said Bruschi, while overseeing winter corn planting on his lot.

 

Similar stories are also repeated across the soy belt.

 

Previously, many large farmers in the centre west planted corn as a winter crop with little hope of making a profit. Rather, they did so to cover the soil or maintain the farm team, a valuable commodity during the winter months, explained an analyst.

 

However, the introduction of new genetically engineered corn seeds and the discovery that investing in winter crops allows them to better withstand the dry winter has changed farmer attitudes to the second crop.

 

Brazil is estimated to plant around 13.5 million acres of winter corn in the 2010-11 season, and that figure will likely rise to 25 million acres in the next 5-10 years, equivalent to about 30% of the soy planted area, according to another analyst.

 

However, Brazil needs new technology to adapt to the shorter soy season, most notably new varieties of short-cycle soy that are more resistant to drought, the analyst added.

 

The analyst also said, "We have seen big advances in seed technology over the last couple of years. This is the obvious next step forward and something Embrapa (the government crop research agency) and others are looking at."