Everyone appreciates a little more bang for their buck - a bit more than expected. In order for you to enjoy that ‘something extra’ at CropSpotters.com, we've added a new page to the site. Here you will find 'offline' comments and insight from the CropSpotters and other contributors, as well as comments and insight from readers like you.
Matthew Kruse is a co-founder and Chief Operational Officer for Grupo Iowa, a farm production and real estate management company in Brazil. He is a permanent resident of Brazil, fluent in Portuguese, with undergraduate degrees from Iowa State University. He is responsible for all aspects of operations in Brazil, including accounting, purchases and marketing, farm development and gin operations. Visit Matthew's website!
We are approximately 50% complete with our corn harvest. Many people are reporting record yields in our area, ourselves included. We are so far averaging approximately 190 bushels per acre. Five years ago 100 bushels per acre was the norm. Improved varieties and technologies have helped make corn a more viable crop in our area. We are experiencing some discounts from excessive kernel damage around the stem of the cob. This is thought to be from different diseases aggravated by all the rain we received earlier this season.
Field preparation is following right behind the combines. We have to take advantage of the moisture in the soil while we can. The dry season has begun. It has rained very little since around April 15th and is not expected to rain again until October. The soil begins to dry out very quickly making deep tillage a more costly and slower operation. The rains here ended very abruptly in mid April. The top bolls on the cotton would have flourished had they received another timely rain. People called it a million dollar rain, when in actuality it probably would have added a quarter of a billion dollars to the state cotton crop revenue had it happened, adding another 10% to the yield.
We are concerned about our supply of electricity this year. Coelba, the state electricity provider (owned and operated by the state), is catching a lot of flack for not keeping up with demand. Demand which is growing daily. And it is not just because of new gins that are being installed in response to the increase cotton acres. General demand from new houses and industrial buildings being built are outstripping supply. We have already solicited improvements to the electric lines leading up to our farm, so we will see if they do anything about it. But if past performance is any indicator, we need to consider buying a generator. These power blackouts add up, costing a lot of time at the gin. Power surges risk causing damage to our electrical grid as well. Even when the electricity flickers on and off it backs up the flow of the cotton in the gin, taking a lot of time to start moving again.
It will be interesting to see how the ginning goes this season. There are people that are still approaching me to gin cotton that don’t have a place to send it. New gins being built are delayed and what gins are ready to go have sold out or even oversold their output. Brazil and most of the world has become cotton crazy in a very short amount of time. Most people planted first and asked where they were going to process their cotton later. Cotton is sold in bales only after it has been ginned, separating the seed and cleaning the fiber.
Cash soybeans are currently trading at U$11.70 per bushel…cash corn is U$5.60 per bushel and cotton is U$1.35 per lb.
Telma Manganeli is a leading soybean producer from Piauí state (where CropSpotter Idemar Cover farms). Telma submitted a special report this week, along with photos. Here’s what she said:
Harvest in the south of Piauí this week has picked up pace.
However, the rains last Sunday (March 27th) came hard in the area. It wasn’t so hard as to hurt the crop—and producers are still able to get out and harvest—but producers can’t harvest straight through. We just hope the intensity of the rain doesn’t cause future losses.
Meanwhile, the terrible condition of the roads is leaving producers pretty concerned, since there are stretches that are impassable - and this in one of the main routes used for getting grain out of the southern part of the state.
Every year, it’s the same story, as palliative steps to recover the roads are only taken by farmers themselves, and the problem gets worse with the intense grain-hauling traffic.
Even today, with all the technology available to agriculture in Brazil, it appears that we’re still living decades in the past, and we’ve got no defined ag policy. Agribusiness is the engine behind a good part of the country’s GDP, and is behind development across the country. It creates jobs, feeds cities - and even countries. But even so, this is invisible in Brazil. Invisible, at any rate, to policymakers. So we end up dealing with a variety of challenges, and even today, with all the technology we’ve got, it appears that we’re living decades in the past: without highways, and without a set ag policy.
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Click each thumbnail to see a larger image
It's soybean harvest time for Prime CropSpotter and Paraná farmer Dr. Edison Ponti. Subscribers get to read his reports each week, but we thought all our readers would enjoy seeing his photos. Click each thumbnail to see a larger image.
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Prime CropSpotter and Paraná farmer Dr. Edison Ponti provided photos of his soybean crop at Week 18. Subscribers get to read his reports each week, but we thought all our readers would enjoy seeing his photos. Click each thumbnail to see a larger image.
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Prime CropSpotter Ademir Rostirolla sent us these shots of state road MT388, in order to give you an idea of some of the roads his trucks have to pass at harvest time. As you can see, he gets concerned when it rains too much at harvest. That's Ademir in the light blue shirt with glasses around his neck. The county president, Sr. Dirceu, wears sunglasses, on the left side of the photo.
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Source: Wikipedia
Novo Monte Verde is north of Mato Grosso's soybean-growing area, but much like the terrain the trucks must traverse to get soybeans to the Amazon port at Santarém . Click each thumbnail to see a larger image.
Photos: Community of Nova Monte Verde
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Prime CropSpotter and Paraná farmer Dr. Edison Ponti provided photos of his soybean crop at Week 15. Subscribers get to read his reports each week, but we thought all our readers would enjoy seeing his photos. Click each thumbnail to see a larger image.
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CropSpotter Silvio Antonio says that capybaras and tapirs are his biggest problems on the farm. We posted a YouTube video of capybaras on this page (see January 21, 2011) but he mentioned tapirs in this week's report. Watch the video below to see what he's talking about.
Prime CropSpotter Edison Ponti provided a map with his report this week - showing Soil Moisture Deficit and Excess on January 30, 2011 for his state of Paraná.
The measurements are in millimeters. If you don't want to do conversions in your head, you may want your favorite metric conversion tool by your side. If you don't have one handy, try the one at http://www.onlineconversion.com/volume.htm
| Click for Soil Moisture Map |
Prime CropSpotter Edison Ponti provided a map with his report this week - showing Soil Moisture Deficit and Excess on January 20, 2011 for his state of Paraná.
The measurements are in millimeters. If you don't want to do conversions in your head, you may want your favorite metric conversion tool by your side. If you don't have one handy, try the one at http://www.onlineconversion.com/volume.htm
| Click for Soil Moisture Map |
In his Week 12 (01-18-11) farm report, CropSpotter Silvio Antonio reported a pest problem - capybaras devouring his corn. For those of us who are not familiar with this animal, the capybaras is a semi-aquatic rodent of South America. It stands over 2 feet tall, and weighs around 100 pounds. Want to see them in action? Watch this You Tube video.
Prime CropSpotter Edison Ponti provided some extra material with his report this week - Simepar data from January 2011 showing rainfall amounts and locations for his state - Paraná.
The rainfall amounts are in millimeters, so you may want your favorite metric conversion tool by your side. If you don't have one handy, try the one at http://www.onlineconversion.com/volume.htm
| Click for Rain Chart | Click for Rain Map |
This week's invited guest commentator is the new ag secretary of Paraná. We are reprinting his speech upon assuming the office, and he's certainly looking to get a lot done. So we asked a Paraná farmer, CropSpotter, and former head of several ag associations Edison Mazei Ponti if he knows the new ag secretary-- and what he thinks. Here's what Edison wrote:
I have known Norberto Anacieto Ortigara for many years, and his resume indicates that he will make a good state agriculture secretary. He’s an economist and an ag technician, and has been a career employee of the State Secretariat of Agriculture since 1978. There, he has worked as a researcher, market analyst, division head, department director, general director and lieutenant secretary. He has sat on the board of directors of Emater-PR (state extension agency – ed.,) Ceasa (terminal markets- ed.), Claspar and Codapar (the state product classification and ag development agencies – ed.) From 2006, he was the City of Curitiba’s Secretary of Food Supply. And he’s got the support of several organizations representing farmers, agricultural workers and agribusiness. So he knows the field well and knows all the ag players. So, from that angle, he’s got all the tools to be able to do a good job of continuing the administrative end of things.
That said, we’ll wait and see how creative he is, and his skill at surrounding himself with talent to serve as wise problem-solvers , and as revolutionaries who are also practical and rational.
We’re looking for innovation and quick innovations from him. We are hoping for strong effects and concrete results on behalf of a fair agricultural program, and of the resolution of the many problems that have been developing over years with no solutions.
Prime CropSpotter and Mato Grosso farmer Ademir Rostirolla kindly provided photos of his soybean crop. Subscribers get to read his reports each week, but we thought all our readers would enjoy seeing his photos. Click each thumbnail to see a larger image.
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