October 10, 2006

Brazil's IBGE puts 2006/07 soy crop at 22 million hectares

Brazil's soy planting intentions for the 2006/07 season as of September were put at 22 million hectares on Monday (Oct 9), relatively unchanged from the August estimate, according to the Brazil Census Bureau, or IBGE.

IBGE forecast a 52.3 million tonne crop, compared with the 52.4 million tonnes estimated in August.

The planting intention figures are slightly higher than the 20.5 million to 21 million hectares the

National Commodities Supply Corp (Conab) estimated on Oct 5. IBGE's early harvest figure, however, is more bearish than Conab's 53.5 million to 55 million tonne 2006/07 soy estimate. Brazil harvested around 53.4 million in the 2005/06 crop, according to Conab.

Most of the reduction will come from the centre-west and southeast due to a combination of low local soybean prices, an unfavourable foreign exchange between the US dollar and Brazilian real, and farmer preference for more profitable crops, especially cotton and sugarcane.

Soy growers in Mato Grosso, the leading soy planting state, started planting soy last week. Southern states will plant within the next ten days, weather permitting. Estimates made at this time are very rough and consider average yields per state based on planted area, but don't discount for weather problems and plant diseases such as Asian soybean rust which has become an annual occurrence on Brazilian soy farms in the centre-west.

Brazil is the world's no. 2 soy producer and exporter following the US.