July 22, 2013
Brazil''s Mato Grosso faces grain losses due to lack of storage
While tropical climatessupport year-round farming which could lead to atremendous economic advantage, corn and soy farmers in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso face a 10% post-harvest loss, partially due to a lack of storage.
"There is a 34% under capacity of soy storage, and the situation is aggravated by the rapidly increasing production of second-crop (corn)," said Peter Goldsmith, an agricultural economist from the University of Illinois.
"The worst situation occurs in northern Mato Grosso with a simulation of a full-(corn) second crop. The potential to succession crop is great and current levels of storage are low. There is clear evidence of a shortage of storage, particularly private and cooperative, as grainproduction rises in the state," he said in a news release.
Goldsmith conducted the project, which was the first to employ Geographic Information System (GIS) software to map the coordinates of commercial, cooperative and private grain storage facilities in Mato Grosso.
The researchers "then overlaid how much the production there currently is and how much production there would be if farmers were to produce and store a second corn crop on 100% of the bean crop, in order to find the areas that had the most congestion and the least congestion."
The study focused on commercial warehouses with capacity greater than 50,000 tonnes, mapping the state''s 2,143 registered warehouses.
"Of course, the actual under-capacity situation may be less because it assumes double-crop production on every acre. It would be highly unlikely that every acre would be farmed for soy, (corn) and a safrinha or ''little crop.'' Alternatively, though, corn yields are less than half that commonly found in the Midwestern US, so there is a significant upside to the size of the crop.''"
Goldsmith said the information will help determinebest locations for additional storage. "The state of Mato Grosso, where I''ve been working for the past dozen years, is the largest state producing soy in the world," Goldsmith said.
"It produces 38% of Brazil''s soy and an increasingly greater percentage of corn. It''s also thetop state in Brazil for rice, cattle and cotton. Over my years of involvement, I have seen it change from being an emergent agro-industrial complex state toone that is now a global leader."
Goldsmith said the project was funded by the Archer Daniels Midland Institute for the Prevention of Postharvest Loss, which researches aspects of loss in developing countries.
"Losses occur in three areas- grain that''s left standing in the field after a harvest, during the short haul when grain falls off of the truck in transportation from the field to either storage or commercial sale and loss of private storage," he said.
The nature of non-stop, year-round farming in the tropics contributes to the loss.
"Farmers have to harvest soy during the rainy season because if they wait until the end of the rainy season to plant corn, the corn won''t get pollinated due to the onset of the dry season," he said. "A farmer might sacrifice soy to get the corn planted."
Goldsmith said tropical regions of the globe will be producing more of the world''s food so helping farmers in developing countries, such as Brazil, to create more-efficient harvesting, transporting and storage is a step toward ensuring there will be enough grain tomeet international demand.
"Places like Mato Grosso are at the margin where the food gap can be closed. In most temperate regions of the world, grain productivity is already high so increasing output to meet rising demand is more incremental", said Goldsmith."The big changes are happening in the low-latitude regions of South America and Africa."