Rain reduces quality, prices of early Brazil's soya harvest

Buyers of soyabeans in Brazil's biggest producer state, Mato Grosso, have rejected or heavily discounted some early-harvest cargoes that they say were too wet or spoilt due to weeks of unrelenting rain, producers' association Aprosoja said Thursday. Rains spilling over from the Amazon into the grain-rich center-west region have cleared in recent days, however, after three weeks of downpour. Rising temperatures and tropical sun will improve the quality of beans from here out.
Meanwhile, a backlog of ships grows at Brazilian ports to carry what the world hopes will be a record 83-million-tonne-plus crop to replenish international grain stores in Asia, Europe and Africa, after a severe drought sapped output from the United States and Latin America over the past year. "They began to reject. This soya is very bad quality, outside of the norms," said Nery Ribas, technical director of the association. "A great majority of the producers don't have silos, which makes for a big problem."
The state, which is due to harvest more than 40 million tonnes - 24 million soya and 16 million of corn, only has about 30 million tonnes capacity to store those crops, according to the government statistics institute IBGE. In the main central grain belt of Mato Grosso, 200 millimeters (8 inches) of rain have fallen since the start of February. The historical average for the entire month of February in the state is 262 mm, local forecaster Somar said.
The state's farm economics institute Imea estimated 420,000 tonnes of soya suffered a loss of quality due to moisture at the time of harvest. Isolated pockets of dry weather during planting last year also contributed. Specialist Bruno Perottoni at local grain brokers Terra Investimentos said he's getting reports of some deliveries of soya with 37 percent humidity, well outside the standard of 20 percent, and this has affected what buyers are willing to pay. Perottoni said some producers are buying soya from Parana state 1,000 km to the south to mix with their beans to raise their shipments' quality to levels sufficient to meet export contract standards.