Conab has lowered its forecast for Brazil’s soybean and corn harvests

Conab analysts in a January report trimmed their forecast for Brazil’s 2023/24 soybean crop by 3.1% month-on-month to 155.3 million tons. The corn crop forecast was also cut by 0.8% to 117.6 million tons. The reason for these changes was unfavorable weather conditions in different regions of the country, where there was a deficit of precipitation in the northern regions and an excess of precipitation in the south, as well as high temperatures. Heavy rainfall in the south of the country hampered the sowing campaign.

The updated forecast for Brazil’s soybean production is now 4.2% below the original expert estimate (162 million tons), but still 0.4% above the 2022/23 results (154.6 million tons).

The soybean area under cultivation forecast is also down 0.1% month-on-month at 45.2 million hectares (up 2.7% year-on-year). Brazil’s forecast for soybean exports in 2024 also fell to 98.45 million tons from the previous 101.5 million tons (down 3.2% annually).

Meanwhile, analysts left Brazil’s projected soybean processing in 2023/24 unchanged at 54.3 million tons, although the forecast for soybean meal production was raised to 40.6 million tons (40 million tons in preliminary estimates; up 8.2% per year) and soybean oil production will be 10.7 million tons.

According to Conab, Brazil’s corn harvest in 2023/24 could be 10.9% below the results of the 2022/23 season. Specifically, the country’s first harvest of corn is forecast at 24.38 million tons (down 3.7% month-on-month) and safrinha corn at 91.2 million tons. The forecast for corn exports in 2024 has been reduced from 38 million tons to 35 million tons.

Tags: corn, Brazil, soybean, crop forecast