Mato Grosso accounts for nearly 70% of Brazil's corn exports

Author: Michael Cordonnier/Soybean & Corn Advisor, Inc.
 

The state of Mato Grosso is famous for its soybean production, but it is also the major corn producing state in Brazil and the state's corn production continues to account for an ever larger share of Brazil's corn exports.
 

According to the Mato Grosso Institute of Agricultural Economics (Imea), thus far Mato Grosso has exported 17.38 million tons of corn from the 2017/18 growing season. This represents 69% of Brazil's total corn exports thus far for the 2017/18 crop. Before the 2017/18 corn export season closes, Imea expects the total corn exports from Mato Grosso to reach 17.62 million tons.
 

This represents the largest participation in Brazil's corn exports since the 2008/09 growing season. One of the primary reasons for the increase in 2017/18 is that other regions of Brazil reduced their safrinha corn acreage and suffered lower yields due to the delayed harvest of the first crop of soybeans.
 

Virtually all of the corn produced in Mato Grosso is safrinha production planted after the first crop of soybeans is harvested. The trend over the past decade is for farmers in the state to plant more early maturing soybeans in order to allow for more time to plant a second crop of corn or in some cases, a second crop of cotton. Harvesting of the 2018/19 safrinha corn crop in Mato Grosso should start toward the end of May and conclude sometime in July.
 

The safrinha corn crop now represents more than 70% of Brazil's total corn production and it is the safrinha crop that provides the vast majority of Brazil's corn exports. The full-season corn crop is primarily planted in southern Brazil and it goes to the domestic livestock industry.