Brazil, the world's largest soybean producer, will have to rely on imports from the United States to face the off-season after mass exports to China in the first half.
The need for imports reflects the drop in domestic inventories caused by the large volume of exports and the increase in domestic demand. It occurs at a time of high grain prices, which are more expensive than in the months when the country sold its production abroad.
The estimate by the Brazilian Association of the Vegetable Oil Industry is that the volume imported by Brazil will reach around one million tons in 2020, seven times higher than the previous year. Exports are expected to be around 82 million tons, up 10%.
In October alone, Brazil imported 71 thousand tons, against 1.3 thousand in the same period of the previous year. In the first ten months of 2020, there were already 600 thousand tons, 379% more than in 2019, pointed out the Commodities Shuttle column, published by Folha, which already warned of the increase in imports.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon