Sugar Annual Report, Brazil – 15th April 2021

Brazil’s Marketing Year (MY) 2021/22 sugarcane crop is estimated at 635 million metric tons (mmt), a decrease of three percent compared to the final estimate for MY 2020/21 (657 mmt). The dry weather that prevailed between August and October 2020 damaged sugarcane fields, thus reducing production potential. Fire outbreaks also harmed cane stocks. Sugar prices have recovered since March 2020 and have remained much more attractive than ethanol prices. Therefore, sugar-ethanol plants should remain focusing on sugar production, and the sugar-ethanol production mix will likely be similar to the previous season. The revised estimate for Brazilian exports in MY 2020/21 is 32.15 mmt, raw value, the largest volume exported by Brazil, representing roughly 50 percent of the world exports. As the second-largest recipient of the U.S. sugar tariff-rate quota, Brazil held a raw value allocation of 152,691 metric tons at the beginning of FY 2021.