Marcos Meloni will not soon forget that day in late August when he fought the flames that threatened to consume his sugarcane farm in southeastern Brazil.
“When we were fighting the fire, the rearview mirror of the water tanker shriveled up” due to the intense heat, this farmer living in Barrinha, 340 kilometres from Sao Paulo, in the heart of a major production area, told AFP.
“I thought I was going to die there,” he says.
The fires of an extraordinary scale that have been raging from the Amazon in the north to the south of the immense Latin American country for several weeks, most of them of criminal origin according to the authorities, are being fueled by a historic drought, which experts attribute in part to global warming.
Result: the sugar cane harvest, but also those of coffee, oranges and soya, of which this agricultural giant is the world’s leading producer and exporter, risk being affected. All the more so since the rains expected in October could be, depending on the region, below average.
Across the state of Sao Paulo, at least 231,830 hectares of sugarcane plantations – out of the four million that make up the country’s main sugar-producing region – have been affected to varying degrees by the fires, half of which have yet to be harvested in the coming months, according to the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Union (Unica).
“Where sugarcane is still standing, we expect the yield (of sugar, editor’s note) to drop by half,” says José Guilherme Nogueira, CEO of the Organization of Sugarcane Producers Associations of Brazil (Orplana).
Producer Marcos Meloni had already finished his harvest but suffered significant damage. “It burned where there were shoots, which were already struggling to come out due to the lack of water. Now we have to see where we will have to replant.”
– “Open your eyes” –
In Minas Gerais (southeast), a rich agricultural region where 70% of Brazilian Arabica comes from, coffee growers are also waiting for the arrival of rains, necessary for the flowering of the shrubs and then for the formation of the coffee cherries which will be picked next year.
“We are lacking water in the soil, it is the worst water deficit in 40 years,” laments José Marcos Magalhaes, president of Minasul, the second largest cooperative in the country. By the end of the month, “we need rains of good intensity to hope to have a normal harvest” in 2025, he says.
However, the adverse climatic conditions of the recent period have already disrupted the 2023-2024 harvest, which is about to end.
While the National Supply Company (Conab), a public body, anticipated an 8.2% increase in Arabica production in May, these forecasts “will probably be revised downwards”, estimates Renato Ribeiro, from the Center for Advanced Studies in Applied Economics at the University of Sao Paulo.
Concentrated in the states of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, orange production, largely intended for the fruit juice industry, must also suffer from the drought.
After announcing last May a 2024-2025 harvest at its lowest level in three decades, the Brazilian citrus producers’ association Fundecitrus lowered its forecasts again a few days ago and is counting on a 29.8% drop in production, already affected by a bacterial disease.
A flagship product of Brazilian agro-trading, a pillar of its political power and international influence, soy has not been spared.
Its harvest is expected to drop by 4.7% this year, according to Conab. This is due to drought and also to torrential rains that fell in April-May in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (south). The drought is now delaying new plantings in the producing regions.
“If the weather improves, soybean producers can make up for lost time,” calculates Luiz Fernando Gutierrez, an analyst at Safras e Mercado. “But if the drought continues into October, there could be harvest problems” in 2025, he warns.
Agribusiness, one of the economic sectors most affected by climate change, nevertheless bears a heavy share of responsibility for its own setbacks, points out climatologist Carlos Nobre.
“This is the sector that emits the most greenhouse gases in Brazil. It must reduce them and put an end to deforestation. It must open its eyes.”
mj/tmo/lpa
