Around the world countries are searching for ways to recover from the coronavirus. In Brazil, citizens have pushed back against recent government decisions, which could affect soybean exports.
“As of right now, they’ve got some ballooning cases and the president doesn’t seem to care much. I mean, he was quoted this weekend basically saying ‘what do you want me to do about it’ on this coronavirus, so there’s a lot of concern,” Ben Kasch with Bower Trading said.
He says that port strikes are a key concern, at a time when exports are booming. So far, Brazil has been able to maintain a steady level of exports.
“I think we’re still seeing a pretty aggressive export program that they have there. Over these past three weeks of May, they’ve done 12 million metric tons shipped out,” Kasch said. “Last year, during the whole month of May, they did 10 million metric tons, so they are pretty aggressive.”
U.S. soybean exporters are also expected to benefit from increasing Chinese purchases. Kasch notes that the timing is unfortunate for Brazil because soybean growing states were just starting to see more favorable weather for crop conditions.