Porto Alegre, March 7, 2023 – The soybean business pace for the 2022/23 Brazilian crop registered some improvement in February and the first days of March. Even so, the percentage sold remains well below the five-year average for this period of the year.
The arrival of the new crop has encouraged growers to speed up sales, but the negative pressure from the record volume being reaped has prevented an even better pace. The fact is that, due to the need to sell production, growers will have to keep selling even in an environment of weaker prices in the coming few weeks.
According to a survey carried out by SAFRAS & Mercado, with data collected through March 3, 35.4% of Brazil’s 2022/23 soybean crop were sold, with an increase of 4.9% from the percentage of the previous month (30.5%). The current percentage is equivalent to approximately 53.924 mln tons traded, out of a crop currently estimated at 152.425 mln tons. In the same period of the previous year, the percentage was 48.5%, while the five-year average for the period is 51.7%.
For the new Brazilian soybean crop (2023/24), the data are still very preliminary, but already indicate a theoretical percentage sold of 1.6% of a still hypothetical production (based on the 2022/23 crop). For the current calculation, we used the figures of the 2022/23 crop, as the first estimate by SAFRAS & Mercado for the new crop (2023/24) will be released in July, in its traditional planting intention report.