PAM
Agricultural production value hits record with smaller crops and harvested areas in 2018
September 05, 2019 10h00 AM | Last Updated: September 06, 2019 04h12 PM
The Brazilian agricultural production value hit a record in 2018, reaching R$343.5 billion, a high of 8.3% over 2017. The scenario was leveraged by the increase in the prices of commodities as soybeans (13.6%), cotton (52.3%) and coffee (22%), in a year when the grain crops fell 4.7% and the harvested area, 0.5%.
The supervisor of the Municipal Agricultural Survey (PAM) 2018, released today by the IBGE, Larissa Leone, explains that, except for coffee, the international context played a decisive role in the high of the other two products' prices.
“In soybeans, what really influenced was the international market, driven by the commercial dispute between China and USA”, she says.
According to her, there was a process of taxation involving the two countries. As a result, China taxed soybeans which was imported from the United States, causing Chinese buyers to look for other countries for a cheaper price.
“In addition, the crop shortfall in Argentina, Brazil's main South American competitor, took the country to the position of the world's main exporter”, complements the supervisor.
In the case of the cotton's high, there was a greater demand of China for the product and a reduction of it in the world storage. As to coffee, it was influenced not only by price but, far and foremost, by production, which increased because of good weather conditions and the positive biennuality, a phenomenon that makes productivity higher every other year.
Corn crop decrease keeps prices up
The grain bumper crop of 2017 was not surpassed in 2018. Even with increases of 29% in the production of upland cotton seed, 43.5% in oats, 2.8% in soybeans and 24.8% in wheat, the 16% decrease in corn production - equivalent to 15.6 million metric tons - was the decisive for the decrease of 4.7% in the total produced by the group of cereals, legumes and oilseeds, which stood at 227.5 million metric tons.
IBGE Agriculture Manager Carlos Alfredo Guedes explains that, despite the significant drop in corn, the value of production was much higher than that of the previous year (14.1%).
“We had a soybean record, a coffee record and a drop in corn. If you look at the production value of corn, it is higher than in 2017. The price has gone up. We had a fall here, a fall in Argentina. So, as corn was lacking in the market, the prices went up a lot,” he says.
Soybean is the main product in four of the five regions
With R$95.9 billion, the Central-West Region reached the highest production volume. In all Major Regions, the main product was soybean, except for the Northeast, where sugarcane is the highlight.
São Paulo is the state with the greatest production value, with national contribution of 15.5%, followed by Mato Grosso, which increased its percentage from 13.7% to 14.6%, Bahia (5.7%) and Mato Grosso do Sul (5.6%). Those states increased, in 2018, their production of soybean and upland cotton, in addition they are also great producers of corn.
As to the municipalities, the highest production value occurred in São Desidério (BA), which went up from the third to the first position, with R$3.6 billion. The most important products in the municipality are soybean, cotton and corn.
