By Nayara Figueiredo
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – In 2022, marked by the war in Ukraine, Russia managed to remain the largest supplier of fertilizers to Brazil, but lost market share to fertilizer exporters from Canada and the United States, data from Itaú BBA showed. this Friday.
Brazil imports about 85% of its fertilizer needs. At the other end, Russia and its ally in the war, Belarus, important world suppliers, reduced their percentage of deliveries of the product to Brazilians in the accumulated of the year until September, at a time when they face Western sanctions.
In the first nine months of 2022, Brazil acquired 27.88 million tons of fertilizers on the international market, against 26.86 million in the same period last year, Itaú said based on data from the federal government.
Of the total, Russia was the origin of 23% of imports. Between January and September 2021, however, the Russians were responsible for a 25% share.
On the other hand, Canada increased its share from 11% to 14% year-on-year, equaling China, which also supplied 14% of the fertilizers purchased by Brazilians this year.
Morocco, which last year represented 8% of the sector’s supply to Brazil, dropped to 6%.
In addition, Belarus lost its place in the list of top exporters to Brazil in 2021 (7%) to the United States, which was out of the top ranking until last year and now ranks at 6%, data compiled by the bank showed.
“The main countries exporting fertilizers to Brazil until the end of the ninth month of 2022 were Russia, Canada and China, with Canada increasing its representativeness in volume compared to the accumulated until September 2021”, said Itaú BBA in the analysis. .
In early March, shortly after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the then Minister of Agriculture of Brazil Tereza Cristina traveled to Canada and held meetings with the aim of expanding the supply of fertilizers produced by companies such as Brazil Potash.
Russian fertilizers continued to arrive even after the onset of Western sanctions triggered by the conflict.
There was diplomatic work carried out by the Brazilian government with the eastern European country to guarantee the input, which had a mission from President Jair Bolsonaro, but that did not prevent the decline in purchases of the product from Russia by the national industry – which had to deal with for months. with high prices.
The high costs led the Anda fertilizer association to estimate for 2022 a drop between 5% and 7% for domestic deliveries of the product.
“If we consider the volume of imports carried out until September 2022, in order to reach an amount of deliveries to the market 5% lower compared to the year 2021, foreign purchases until the end of 2022 will have to reach 9.3 million tons” , estimated by Itaú BBA on the volume of imports that should still occur in this last quarter.
The recent decline in fertilizer prices favors the exchange ratio for the farmer and is a positive factor for imports to continue in the coming months.
In the case of potassium chloride (KCl), Itaú BBA calculates that 21.5 bags of soy are needed to purchase one ton of the input, a ratio below that recorded in the same period last year, which was close to 28 bags, but above the historical average.
(Reporting by Nayara Figueiredo)
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