Climate change may soon reduce Brazil's soy exports over the next 12 years, according to a study to be presented at an agribusiness conference in Sao Paulo.

 

The study would show that even moderate rises in temperatures would cause significant damage to agricultural production in Brazil, which has emerged as one of the world's biggest suppliers of food crops.

 

By 2020, the study says, the value of six of Brazil's food crops – rice, coffee, beans, manioc, corn and soy – could fall US$4 billion if average temperatures rose by between 1 deg C and 2 deg C.

 

''The result will be a significant drop in Brazil's farm exports,'' Hilton Silveira Pinto, one of the report's authors, told the Financial Times.

 

The study is based on models of climate change developed at the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and applied at local level to all of Brazil 5,562 municipalities by researchers at Unicamp, a university at Campinas in Sao Paulo state, and Embrapa, a Brazilian ­government agricultural research institute.

 

It takes account of different rates of temperature change in Brazil under best and worst-case scenarios that would result in average temperature rises by 2020 of between 1 deg C and 2 deg C from a baseline of average temperatures between 1961 and 1990.

 

In parts of Brazil, such as in the rich agricultural hinterland of Sao Paulo state, temperatures have already risen by about 1 deg C since then, said Prof Pinto.

 

Soy would be the grain most affected, he said. Tonnes

 

The amount of land suitable for soy cultivation would fall by more than 21 percent under the best-case scenario, which assumes that action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and by almost 24 percent if emissions continue at present rates.

 

This would result in a loss of 11.3 million tonnes of soya from current production of 52.4 million tonnes under the best-case scenario.

 

Brazil last year exported about 38.5 million tonnes of soy products such as soybeans, meal and oil.

 

This meant a drop in exports by 2020 of at least 29 percent, assuming Brazil still consumes soy at its present rate.

 

However, sugarcane would thrive in the high temperatures, he said.

 

Prof Pinto stressed that the report was based on the most advanced crop varieties planted in Brazil and said damage could be mitigated by the development of new strains resistant to higher temperatures. However, he warned that few crops would withstand average temperature rises of more than 2 deg C.