Agribusiness exports reach US$67 billion in 2024

Between January and May 2024, Brazilian agribusiness exports totaled US$67.17 billion, showing a small drop of 0.2%, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. Pedro Afonso Gomes, president of the Regional Economic Council of the state of São Paulo (Corecon-SP), highlights that the result was influenced by Brazilian export products, which showed a price reduction abroad.

“It wasn’t so much the issue of the quantity of products, but rather the unit value of each product, which ended up reducing exports a little, and within this, there are also agribusiness products. There were some interesting factors from the point of view of increase in sales, as is the case with meat”, he explains.

According to the ministry, the prices of exported products fell by 9.8%, despite the quantity index having increased by 10.7% in the first five months of the year. In total, agribusiness represented 48.4% of total Brazilian exports.

According to SAFRAS & MERCADO analyst and consultant, Fernando Iglesias, the highlights of Brazilian agribusiness exports are the meat sector, the sugar and alcohol complex and the grain, corn and soybean market, in particular.

“We are going to enter the Brazilian off-season export window and corn will play an important role in commodity shipments here in Brazil. We have some aspects that lead to this result, Brazil today is extremely competitive in the export of agricultural commodities, this does not It’s no one’s secret. Just citing the meat sector as an example, the country is now the global leader in chicken and beef exports”, he informs.

The sugar and alcohol complex continues to break records. According to Mapa, in May 2024, the sector reached US$1.43 billion in exports, an increase of 15.3% compared to May 2023. The performance was driven by the record volume of sugar exported in the month of May.

Meat is among the main exporting sectors of Brazilian agribusiness, representing 14.2% of all external sales in the sector, an increase of 2.0% compared to the same month in 2023.

Forest products ranked third among the main agribusiness export sectors, with foreign sales totaling US$1.55 billion (+25.5%).

Unlike the soybean and meat complex, forestry products registered an increase in average export prices.

According to the data, in May 2024, Brazilian exports of agribusiness products reached US$15.05 billion, representing 49.6% of Brazil’s total exports. This value was 10.2% lower than the US$16.76 billion exported in the same month of 2023, resulting in an absolute drop of US$1.71 billion.

Expectations

For Fernando Iglesias, in the coming years Brazil should continue to be one of the main suppliers of agricultural commodity products on a global scale.

“Brazil will continue to produce very interesting results in relation to the sale of its products abroad. The country has a very good understanding of global demand, can meet market expectations very well and can understand very well what each consumer is looking for, this makes a huge difference to the Brazilian market”, he points out.

He also states that the devalued exchange rate leads to greater competitiveness of Brazilian products. In other words, the more devalued the Brazilian currency is, the more competitive the product is.

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By Brasil 61