SAO PAULO: Brazil's soybean forward sales have lagged, consultancy Safras & Mercado said in a statement on Friday, as prices remained low and producers preferred to wait before making sales commitments.
Farmers have sold 26.7 percent of the soybeans planted in the current 2017-18 crop cycle, representing some 30.575 million tonnes of a 114.7 million tonne output forecast, Safras said.
"Sales picked up in November as Chicago and the forex rate offered opportunities," Luiz Fernando Gutierrez Roque, a Safras analyst, told Reuters in an emailed statement. "But the pace of sales remained below the normal average due to the price levels all year long and current soy futures prices."
Forward sales are below a 33 percent historical average for this period of the year, but represent an advance from the figure released on Nov. 6, when they accounted for 19.1 percent of the estimated crop, Safras said.
Around this time in 2016, farmers had sold 28 percent of their crop in advance, according to the report.
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