Rainfall in Brazil last week again favored the northern part of the country with less rain in far southern Brazil. The forecast is calling for more rain in northern Brazil with increased chances of rain in southern Brazil. The wet weather has slowed down the soybean harvest, but it has been good for safrinha corn establishment.
Soybean harvesting in Brazil slowed down last week due to wet weather. The soybeans were 40% harvested compared to 33% last year and 36% average according to AgRural. This represents an advance of 8% for the week which was the smallest weekly advance at this time of the year since 2009. The harvest is approaching completion in northern and western Mato Grosso and western Parana.
Since the 2023/24 Brazil soybean estimate was lowered two weeks in a row, I left it unchanged this week at 145.0 million tons with a neutral to lower bias going forward. Even though the harvest has moved into some of the later developing soybeans, the yields have not improved enough to completely compensate for the low yields from the earlier soybeans.