Brazil's summer corn crop could set production records following favorable weather in growing regions, a new report said this week, as analysts eye additional export opportunities for the sector under the Trump administration.
Early reporting from corn producing regions in the central and southern parts of the country are showing strong yields for the summer crop, Safras and Mercado – Brazil’s largest agribusiness consultancy – said on Thursday.
“The climate is very good,” Raphael Bulascoschi, a market intelligence analyst for StoneX Brazil, told Agri-Pulse.
The summer crop accounts for about 20% of annual production. A larger crop, which makes up about 80% of the country’s supply, will be planted next month. Bulascoschi said that climate models in the early part of 2025 suggest strong growing conditions will carry over to the beginning of the next crop.
“We are very close to a historical harvest in terms of yields,” Joana Colussi, an instructor at the University of Illinois, told Agri-Pulse. If projections are met, this season could be the second-largest harvest on record, Colussi added.
With limited room for domestic consumption to grow and little storage capacity for grain, any boost to Brazilian productivity will spur the country’s exports, Bulascoschi noted.
“When we have very good production, we have also very good exports,” he said.
Brazil exported 56 million tons of corn in the 2023 fiscal year – outpacing the U.S. for only the third time in a decade, according to the University of Illinois. For 2024, however, exports are projected to drop to around 39 million tons after competitor countries saw larger harvests and China scaled back purchases, but Bulascoschi said exports should rise slightly next year if the productivity boost holds and favorable conditions endure.
China, the world’s largest corn importer, has set the goal of becoming self-sufficient in agriculture. Its domestic corn production capabilities have expanded in recent years in tandem with Beijing’s food security ambitions.
“China is expanding its production year by year,” Bulascoschi said, “but it’s not expanding at a scary pace – a pace that makes the global corn market shift from what we have seen the last two or three years… We still will be able to find some demand abroad.”
Brazil’s farmers should also benefit from some economic headwinds. The country’s currency has depreciated significantly against the dollar. If it remains low, Colussi said, Brazilian producers will have a price advantage in international markets.
Raphael Bulascoschi
Colussi, however, was more skeptical that higher productivity and a strong 2024-2025 harvest would necessarily lead to higher exports. Around 20% of Brazil’s corn goes to domestic ethanol production, and rising demands in the sector could push more corn toward domestic consumption.
“Corn ethanol production remains growing in Brazil,” Colussi said. Brazil’s gasoline blend rate is already as high as 27.5% and some lawmakers are backing a proposal to lift it to 30%, the Agriculture Department says.
Both analysts agreed, however, that if President-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats materialize, they will likely buoy Brazil’s corn exports.
Brazil was among the major beneficiaries of the tit-for-tat tariff escalation between the U.S. and China during Trump’s first term – as Chinese buyers diverted agricultural commodity purchases away from the U.S.
This time around, in addition to hiking tariffs on Chinese goods, Trump has threatened Canada and Mexico with new duties and floated an across-the-board tariff applied to all U.S. imports.
If the Trump administration slaps new tariffs on its closest trading partners, the Mexican market will offer particular promise for Brazilian corn producers, Bulascoschi said.
“Mexico is the largest buyer of the U.S.’ corn,” Bulascoschi said. If Mexico City were to retaliate to tariff hikes on its exports, he added, these purchases could shift elsewhere – to Brazil, for example.
“We could see Mexico shifting… but also South Korea or Japan, or other big importers of corn,” Bulascoschi said.
Accordingly, Brazil’s corn industry is viewing the tariff threats as a potential export boon, he said, but added that “we need to wait for Trump to sit on the chair to determine what could be done.”
