SAO PAULO: Brazil's main center-south sugar cane crop will fall to less than 577 million tonnes in the April-March season, indicative of an expected drop in yields below earlier projections, local analysts Canaplan said on Tuesday.
In October, Canaplan had forecast the crop that will officially start crushing in April at 577 million tonnes.
But that was "if everything went perfectly," Luiz Carvalho, director of Canaplan, said. "As it is, the crop is on course for a disaster."
Carvalho said the rates of replanting old cane had fallen sharply this past year, which crushed 595 million tonnes of cane. Expansion of cane area fell below 1 percent as well, he added.
Meanwhile, drought in January and February, coupled with frost last year, also hurt the crop.
Carvalho, who spoke with Reuters at an agribusiness seminar in Sao Paulo, said Canaplan in April would publish a lower estimate for the crop.
On Monday, competing analysts Archer Consulting put out its first estimate of the new crop at 590 million tonnes, 1 percent lower than the current crop, which officially ends this month but finished crushing in early January.
Comments
Comments are closed.