Brazil’s robust soy season: tracking agriculture exports on a weekly basis

Brazil is the dominant player in the global soybean trade after a surge in production in recent decades. It's the world's largest producer and exporter of this crop, and has become China's key supplier.

We can get a real-time sense of how the nation's harvest is going - and an early sense of national trade figures and agricultural exports more broadly - by tracking weekly, staggered export data from the Brazilian government.

The "jagged tooth" pattern in our chart is due to the month-to-date nature of this dataset. (Strictly speaking, the frequency of updates is not always exactly weekly, but there are four updates each month.)

As of May 25th, Brazil had exported 11.2 million ton of soy month-to-date; that roughly matches the figure seen in the same period of 2024, as our first chart shows. We can also observe the peak harvest period from March through June. (During this time frame, soy usually accounts for over 90% of Brazilian agricultural exports in volume terms.)

There are also breakdowns covering daily average volumes, as our second chart shows; 2025 appears to have "front-loaded" exports in March more than other calendar years.

Additionally, this high-frequency dataset is a valuable predictor of the trajectory of the monthly figure, as seen in our third chart. It could provide an early signal if 2025 gets on track to beat the recent annual record.

After a weak 2022, Brazil's soy exports by volume hit an all-time high in 2023, reaching 102 million metric tons; the following year, this amount declined slightly to 98.8 million metric tons. (El Nino was a factor in 2024.)