February 14, 2006

 

Storm partly destroys Brazilian soy in Rio Grande do Sul 

 

 

Heavy rain, wind and hail has destroyed up to 2,500 hectares of soy in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state, a city official told Dow Jones Newswires on Monday.

 

The mayor's office of Coronel Bicaco, a small town in the northwest of Rio Grande do Sul, which is Brazil's third largest soy producer, confirmed that thunderstorms Sunday evening destroyed nearly all of the township's harvest.

 

A full damage assessment is underway. The wind was so strong that an estimated 35 homes in the town had their rooftops blown off.

 

Rio Grande do Sul farms 4 million hectares and is expecting to harvest 8.2 million tonnes of soy in the 2005/06 crop, weather permitting.

 

Chico Veit, an agronomist at Cootricampo, a large cooperative in the same region, said he was told by farmers that at least 1,000 hectares were ruined in Sunday's storm, not 2,500 hectares. The farmers were not part of Cootricampo, however.

 

Cootricampo farms 80,000 hectares of soybeans. Cootricampo's main producer region is roughly 10 kilometres from Coronel Bicaco.

 

"We have not had any problems with rainfall," Veit said. "On the contrary. We could use a bit more. Otherwise, all is well."

 

Veit said normal rainfall in the northern region of the state is roughly 150 millimetres per month, and the region has seen about 50 millimetres in the last 13 days.

 

"This loss in Coronel Bicaco is small time, but it shows that weather is still a worry. Anything goes," said David Brew, a soy market analyst at BraSoja, an agribusiness consultancy.

 

"We've heard from some of our clients that up to 25 percent of the state's crop is in stressful condition," Brew said.

 

February is a crucial month for soybean development. The more moisture in the plant, the larger the soybean. A lack of rainfall in February leads to irreparable harm to the crop.

 

According to government estimates, Brazil should harvest roughly 58 million tonnes of soybeans in the 2005/06 soy crop, up from 51 million tonnes in the 2004/05 soy crop.

 

Government agronomists are currently redoing their Feb 6 estimate because of dry weather concerns in certain regions of key producer states like Parana. That soy crop estimate will be made available on March 20.

 

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