Agribusiness exports reached a very strong pace in 2020. Revenues totaled a record US$ 120.4 billion.
The calculations are from leaf, based on data provided by Secex (Secretariat of Foreign Trade), this Thursday (6).
With this, the financial amount accumulated in the last ten years with sector exports is close to US$ 1 trillion. It is the third time that export earnings exceed US$ 100 billion a year.
As a comparison, the country’s general exports totaled US$ 280.4 billion last year.
Despite this acceleration in sector exports, soybeans, which had taken the lead in the trade balance in 2014, lost their place to minerals last year.
In 2021, exports from the soy complex (which includes grains, bran and oil) totaled US$ 48.5 billion, slightly below the US$ 48.7 billion for ores.
As a result, the share of agribusiness in the country’s total exports returned to 42.9%. In 2020, with soy and meat revenues soaring, and due to the slowdown in ore exports, the share of agribusiness had reached 48%.
Exports with ores had totaled US$ 28.9 billion in 2020, according to data from Secex, a value far from 2021.
The external performance of agribusiness was more due to good prices in the international market than to the volume exported by Brazil.
In some cases, such as corn, there was a sharp deceleration in foreign sales and an increase in imports, due to the shortfall in the national harvest.
Last month, soybeans were traded at 33% above the December 2020 value on the foreign market. In the same period, coffee rose 64%, and wheat, 47%. Among meats, chicken recorded the highest appreciation in the period, with an increase of 23%.
The flagship of agribusiness continues to be soybean exports, which reached a record 86.5 million tons last year, with revenues, also record, of US$ 39.2 billion.
Some products, however, are beginning to stand out in terms of exports.
Fruits, for the first time, surpassed the level of US$ 1 billion.
Last year, revenues from these products totaled $1.1 billion, up 19% from 2020.
The forestry sector, due to sales of wood and pulp, grew by 15%. One of the highlights was the export of raw wood.
Secex data indicate that foreign sales of this type of wood totaled 2.64 million tons, with revenues of US$ 228 million. The volume grew 93%, compared to the previous year, and the revenue, 98%.
The agribusiness trade balance also benefited from the difficult international scenario for coffee. The smaller international supply of the grain and the serious climatic problems in Brazil, the main world supplier of the product, caused explosive increases in prices.
Last year’s revenues reached US$ 6.3 billion, up 14%. This is a product that should not have relief in prices, since the frosts of 2021 should affect the production of part of this year’s crops.
According to data made available by Secex this Thursday, Brazil was greatly favored in 2021 exports, due to external demand and high prices. The country paid dearly, however, for the inputs it had to import.
The purchase of fertilizers, which totaled 34.2 million tons in 2020, rose to 41.6 million last year, up 22%. Spending, which reached US$ 15.2 billion in the period, increased 88%.
The expansion of area forced the country to also increase purchases of agrochemicals. The volume imported last year of the main products, such as insecticides, herbicides and fungicides, rose to 397 thousand tons, worth US$ 3.52 billion. The evolution of expenses was 14% in the year.​
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