Soybean Output Seen Climbing Next Season as Area Expands
Category: Oilseeds
(Businessweek) – Global production of soybeans may climb to a record next season as farmers expand planting especially in the Northern Hemisphere, Oil World said.
World production may be 301.2 million metric tons in the 2014-15 season, 6.1 percent higher than the prior marketing year, the Hamburg-based researcher said in an e-mailed report, releasing its first estimates for the next harvest. Total harvested area worldwide may reach an all-time high of 118.5 million hectares (292.8 million acres), about 4 percent more than the year earlier, according to the report.
“Competitive prices and price relationships are apparently resulting in record plantings in the Northern Hemisphere this spring,” Oil World said. “With the assumption of normal weather from now on, record soybean crops are likely to be harvested in the U.S.A., Canada, Russia, Ukraine and the European Union.”
Soybean futures on the Chicago Board of Trade, the global benchmark, are up 15 percent this year as traders weighed shrinking stockpiles in the U.S., the top producer, against prospects for increasing global supplies. U.S. soybean output in the 2014-15 season, which starts in the country Sept. 1, will total 98 million tons, Oil World said. That’s less than the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s forecast of 98.93 million tons.
Higher output in the Northern Hemisphere may spur a drop in soybean prices, discouraging farmers in South America from a “sizable expansion” of plantings, Oil World said. Production in Brazil may rise 3.4 percent in 2014-15 to 90 million tons, while Argentina’s output climbs 1.8 percent to 56 million tons, according to the report.
World soybean stockpiles will be 90 million tons at the end of the 2014-15 season, 23 percent higher than the prior year, according to the report. Production of 10 major oilseed crops, including soybeans, rapeseed and sunflowers, may total 511.2 million tons, 3.2 percent more than the prior year. Combined stockpiles of oilseeds were pegged at 105.3 million tons at the end of 2014-15, up from 89.9 million tons the prior season.
