Brazil seeks to import U.S. corn as its crop shrinks

Brazil's Agriculture Ministry is working to gain government approval to import certain varities of genetically modified corn from the United States to ease grain shortages and bring down high domestic corn prices caused by this year’s smaller crops, USDA’s attache said.

“The second “safrinha” crop is looking worse as the harvest continues and there are fears that Brazil will run out of corn by 2017,” the report said. Dry conditions this year hurt corn production.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food Supply said on Aug. 3 that it will seek approval of the National Biosafety Technical Commission (CTNBio) to allow imports of genetically modified corn from the United States. The Agriculture Ministry said it wants to ensure the supply of grain in the country, but only for animal feed used by breeders of poultry and pork and milk producers until December 2017.

Brazil grows a number of GMO crops including corn, but has restricted imports of GMO varieties.

In a Reuters report, Brazil’s government in early August lowered its forecast for the 2016 winter corn crop by 1.1% to 42.59 million metric tons from its July forecast of 43.05 million as drought continues to weigh on the final harvest numbers.

Crop supply agency Conab forecast Brazil's total corn output, including the summer harvest, at 68.48 million metric tons, down from July's 69.14 million and last year's 84.67 million. Exports of corn this year will fall to 20 million from 30.17 million last year, it said.