South America Calling

I have spent the last five days travelling through south Brazil with the Rally da Safra crop tour.

The team drove through most of the main soybean and corn-producing regions of Rio Grande do Sul, Parana and Santa Catarina - the only region I didn't see was west Parana.

As I outlined in my previous posts and tweets, we encountered good to very-good soybean crops along the way.

A dry spell of 20-30 days in January had obviously stressed beans during flowering in northern and western Rio Grande do Sul, but crops had a chance to recover and average yields of 47 bushel per acre or over were expected. That's above the state average of 45 bpa.

As we moved north through Santa Catarina and into southwestern Parana, the crops improved, reflecting better weather and probably better crop management.

We then moved into central Parana, around Guarapuava. This high plain contains some of Brazil's best corn areas. Crops were generally excellent in this region with soybean forecast yields of 52 bpa or over the norm.

Brazil's soybean harvest is now around 50% complete with much of the soy left to collect in the regions that I drove through. The least developed soy was in Rio Grande do Sul, although Parana was also a little late, because of delayed planting in October.

Heavy showers fell across the south this weekend, unfortunately while we were counting pods in the field. This dousing should be enough to ensure most plants successfully complete the last parts of the maturation cycle.

The prevalence of caterpillars, and more generally pests and fungus, was something generally noted during this stage of the tour, organized by Agroconsult, a local farm consultancy.

We saw a lot of scruffy-looking fields in Rio Grande do Sul. Others looked better but apparently that was due to intense spraying.

"We had to make four applications on the crop to control attacks. It was intense this year," according to Daniel Strobel, who plants 12,000 acres in northwestern Rio Grande do Sul.

The Heliocoverpa caterpillar has been swarming over eastern Brazilian grain regions for the last two years. The situation is worrying Agriculture Ministry officials, who say it may prompt them to call a state of emergency.

(AG)

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