Soybeans and corn dry and seeds ‘cook’ in the gaucho fields

It doesn’t feel like February in the interior of the northern region of Rio Grande do Sul.

At a time of year when soybean crops usually cover the fields with greenery, with plants at a height of 60 or even 90 centimeters, the landscape is of withered feet, a few centimeters from the ground, some already dry.

The corn plantations that are still found are also small plants, which bear malformed ears.

The region is one of the most affected by the drought that has lasted since the end of 2021, when soybean planting began, in a state where about a third of the 497 municipalities are agricultural.

Until this Thursday (17), 408 — more than 8 out of 10 — had declared a state of emergency.

According to data from Inmet (National Institute of Meteorology), since November last year, rains have been below expectations in the state, especially in the western region. The current drought is the most severe since the summer of 2011/12.

In Espumoso, about 260 km from Porto Alegre, the last “good rain”, with an average above 20 millimeters, had been registered in the last week of October; then came only blows.

Or predictions, which were becoming mirages. At the end of January, some rains even reached this mark, but were insufficient to change the scenario.

Amilton Rosa, 56, even tried to replant some parts of the soybean crop he has in the municipality, but he completely gave up using 80 of his 280 hectares.

“It’s no use planting, what are you going to do? The cost is greater than what you would remove”, he says.

“There are some places that got a little more rain, but there is another crop of ours that we thought would yield 8 bags per hectare, but it gives 4 or 5 and look, if it rains well from now on. rain, we harvested 60”, he evaluates.

In the state, the distribution of rainfall is irregular, observes Alencar Rugeri, technical director of Emater-RS. In some cases, within the region or municipality, it rained on one side of the road while the other was dry.

According to agricultural technicians in the region and producers, the differential of the current drought is the long duration and the beginning at the time of planting and germination. The scarce period of rain in the harvest usually occurs between January and February, with the crops already established.

“There are stages of the crop in which, if it rains, they no longer have an effect, because the losses are consolidated. In others, we are still in the vegetative development phase, grain filling, and then it needs to rain. the harvest, because it doesn’t have the minimum necessary humidity”, he says.

“In economic terms, this will be the drought with the greatest impact, because we have the largest [de plantio] history, with greater productive potential”, he says, citing another critical situation in 2004/05.

The second estimate for the summer crop (2021/22) from Emater-RS points to a 54.7% drop in corn production, from the initial projection of 6.1 million tons to 2.7 million – based on the price of February 10, R$ 5.2 billion in losses.

In soybeans, with 88,000 producers affected, the projection is for a 43.8% cut in the initial production estimate, from 19.9 million tons to 11.1 million, with an impact of R$ 27.8 billion. Data is a state average; in some municipalities, losses reach 90%.

“It’s like taking a chainsaw and cutting the trunk of a tree, because what we had as a project, what we had planned, is all gone. We’re going to need government help to take root, gain strength and produce”, says Delmar Rambo, 62 , a farmer in Mormaço, who calculates that he has lost 98% of his soybean crop.

The accounts also worry the brothers Derli, 50, and Clair Fath, 55, who each plant 30 hectares in Tio Hugo, leasing land from their parents, who also rely on farming for income.

” [Esperamos] some help for us to be able to maintain ourselves or a debt reduction”, says Clair. “We will try to recover something in the winter crop, if there is a resource released for that”.

“It’s a big loss, I don’t know if we’re going to get 8 to 10 bags per hectare. It’s usually 60 or more,” says Derli. “The concern is great, because the cost is high”.

Cláudio Carvalho, an agricultural technician at Emater-RS who serves the municipality, reports that the prices of inputs have jumped in this harvest — the ton of fertilizer that used to cost around R$ 2,000, for example, jumped to the margin between R$ 4,000 and R$5,000 near the plantation.

“The cost of farming per hectare has increased by more than 60%”, he says, noting that most rural producers depend on financing.

Producer Leoder Machado resorted to Proagro (agricultural insurance) to cover corn losses, which are around 70% and awaits the impacts on the soybean crop, where he bet on replanting in some stretches.

“I had good expectations, we made a very high investment in corn, and we had a yield of 15 bags per hectare, some parts a little better, but still bad. In a normal year, the average here is around 160, 170 bags”, he counts. “Pretty frustrating.”​

What governments say about crop failure

Farmers linked to social movements, such as the MST (Landless Rural Workers Movement) and the MPA (Small Farmers Movement), protested in Porto Alegre this Wednesday demanding actions from the federal and state governments in the face of the drought.

Among the claims were the release of credit and emergency aid, debt amnesty and the release of corn with subsidized value from Conab (National Supply Company).

The Eduardo Leite administration (PSDB) announced investments in irrigation and says that it reinforced, together with the federal government, the concern of producers with the lack of rural credit and the difficulties in paying off payments.

The Rio Grande do Sul government says that it is waiting for the Mapa (Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply) on emergency lines of credit and refinancing to help producers, and that it has been informed that the release depends on internal budget allocations from the ministry and on extraordinary credits.

The Mapa says that meetings are being held between the ministry and the Ministry of Economy to enable actions that can mitigate the effects of the drought in the three southern states and in Mato Grosso do Sul.

Rio Grande do Sul is the most affected state in the South region. In Paraná, the projection at the end of January from the Department of Rural Economy, from the State Secretariat for Agriculture and Supply, was for a 39% reduction in soybean production and 36% in first-crop corn.

The losses of rural producers in the state due to the weather can be between R$ 25 and R$ 30 billion.

In Santa Catarina, the estimate is for a drop of 34.5% in the corn crop and 21% in the soybean crop, according to Epagri/Cepa.

The drought also hit livestock: it made Nei Kirschner, 64, give up working with dairy production, which had been in a difficult situation for some time.

He is one of the 33,100 producers in the sector with difficulties in the state — the drop recorded so far is 2.4 million liters of milk per day.

“In our community, there were 12 producers, now there are two and I’m leaving,” he says.

With the drought, feeding the animals became an extra difficulty, he says, who sold all the heifers in the herd — the pasture did not take off and the corn losses were great.

“I made silage, on 8 hectares I managed to remove 15 tons, before I removed around 60 tons per hectare”, he says.

“Let’s finish it while there’s still something left, because if you insist more, there’s nothing left.”

Historical heat also interfered, even “cooking” seeds in the ground in some places.

Estael Sias, meteorologist at MetSul, says that 2022 is the second consecutive year with a La Niña phenomenon (irregular rains with a tendency to dryness) and that the last 12 months had rain below the historical average in the state, leading to a long period of scarcity. .

“Some improvement in terms of rain, which can actually alleviate and reverse the drought situation, most likely only in late autumn, early winter. La Niña ends in mid-April, May and until then it leaves the rain irregular When we look at the forecasts for the coming months, the probability of below-average rain is very high”, he says.