The world’s biggest soybean crop in Brazil is under threat with new data showing vital shipments of Russian fertilizer are slowing down, according to a Bloomberg report.
The number of new cargoes leaving Russia is dropping even as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro touted on April 26 that over two dozen ships are en route. Sanctions and logistical disruptions due to the Ukraine war are causing the slowdown.
The shipments are critical, because Brazilian soybeans go into everything from cooking oil to animal feed all around the world, and a shortfall of fertilizer could result in smaller supplies. Time is running out to get the right amounts needed for planting the South American nation’s mammoth crop in September. Rising soy prices could reverberate throughout world food supply chains and exacerbate inflation.
Brazil is so desperate for fertilizer that it is a key factor in Bolsonaro’s agnostic stance toward Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.
“We’ve adopted a balanced position on this conflict because we can’t survive without fertilizer,” Bolsonaro said April 26 at an event in Brasilia.
Even with Bolsonaro’s armada on the way, data compiled by Bloomberg’s Green Markets shows plunging shipments. Line-up figures on Brazil’s ports schedule show new volumes of Russian fertilizer down 58 percent in the past four weeks compared with the prior period.
Both Russia and Belarus, which account for almost a third of Brazil’s fertilizer imports, are under sanctions from Western nations. No shipments from Belarus have been added to line-up schedules since late February, while new volumes from Russia are falling, according to Marina Cavalcante, an analyst at Bloomberg’s Green Markets.
The declines “may represent a risk for fertilizer supplies in the second half of the year,” said Cavalcante.
Brazil imports more than 85 percent of the fertilizer that it consumes.