South American farmers are bracing for another round of harvest-wrecking polar cold.
A new mass of cold air began buffeting the region Saturday evening, according to Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology (INMET) — and by Sunday, frost had again ravaged the midwest and southwest of Rio Grande do Sul, west of Santa Catarina, and south of Parana.
During the past two decades, Brazilian farmers have gotten used to “double-cropping” soybeans and corn.
This is the main reason Brazil has risen to become the main competitor to U.S. exports for both crops — double-cropping has allowed the country to efficiently use its unique climate to increase annual yields.
However, the window is tight.
And, as you’d expect, the Grand Solar Minimum appears to be closing that window.
Like most tropical locales, Brazil has a distinct wet and dry season. Over the past few decades, the wet season has lasted roughly September to May, allowing a good soybean crop in the spring and summer, followed by a good front-half to the corn season before turning drier.
If the season does not go as planned for any reason, catastrophe can easily strike — and this is the reality this season, as record-breaking cold has routinely buffeted the region.
The soybean season got off to a horribly late start due to late-arriving rains.
And when those rains did finally arrive, they persisted throughout the soybean harvest, delaying things even further — as a result, corn planting was typically delayed by around a month.
The rains quickly shut down in late-March/early-April, and the real worry set in.
Compounding the misery were those debilitating frosts.
Production numbers have continued to be slashed every time a new forecast is released — many private agencies are coming in with well-under 90 million metric tons (mmt) of total corn production, while CONAB recently reduced its forecast down to 93.4 mmt, with the USDA pegging expectations back to 93 mmt.
Note: the recent historic freezes were left out of these estimates, so further reductions are expected.
The second corn in Parana –the second-largest producer in Brazil– is down 19% year on year at 9.8 million mt, according to the latest Parana state agriculture department estimate; however, and as is the case with the agencies above, the department says their next report –released on July 29– will include another downward revision in Parana’s 2020-21 corn output due to “frost damages suffered in late June” (revisions which again won’t take into account the latest bout of polar cold).
“Overall, of the 2.46 million hectares to be harvested, 88% are in poor or average condition,” said the Parana state agriculture department. “In this scenario, we should have a significant reduction in expected production.”
Additional strong frosts are expected to sweep southern Brazil on Monday and Tuesday, extending from the south of Mato Grosso do Sul to the border between Sao Paulo and Parana.
Any corn that survived late-June’s/early-July’s Antarctic fronts will likely be finished off by this latest round.
The cold is forecast to intensify July 19-20 across the South American continent, meaning more heavy crop losses for not only southern Brazil but also Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia.
And looking further ahead again, yet more harvest-wrecking cold is forecast to sweep the continent as the calendar flips to August — temperature departures of more than 20C below the seasonal norm are expected:
GFS m Temp Anomalies (C) for July 30-31 [tropicaltidbits.com].
The Life of Earth
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