Brazil to plant more, harvest less soy next crop

* Area to soybeans to grow but La Nina to curb output
    * Planting, harvest due to occur later with delay in rains
    * 09/10 rains produced exceptional harvest
   
    By Reese Ewing
    SAO PAULO, Brazil, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Brazilian soybean
producers are expected to plant more soybeans as the 2010/11
season kicks off in September, but La Nina is expected to
contain output at or below the record 2009/10 harvest.
    Grain analysts in Brazil expected planted area of soybeans
to grow modestly from the record 23.47 million hectares (58
million acres) due to firm soybean prices.
    But despite the expected bigger area, producers are
unlikely to repeat the record harvest of 68-plus million tonnes
brought in this year due to the exception rains this time a
year ago. Brazil is the world's No. 2 exporter of soy.
    "Producers in Mato Grosso were sowing half their crops by
mid-October last year. It started raining as well in August,"
said Alcindo Uggeri, president of the Rural Association in Novo
Mutum, a major soy region in northern Mato Grosso that is often
one of the first areas to plant.
    "This year, it will rain later. There is still no forecast
for widespread rains in the region. At least Asian soy rust
will be less a factor," he added.
    The global weather phenomenon La Nina, which is
characterized by the cooling of ocean surface temperatures off
the coast of Peru, tends to delay and reduce rainfall over
Brazil's grain belt, especially the southern producing states
of Parana and Rio Grande do Sul.
    The two major southern grain states are prone to droughts
during La Nina years.
    Rains in the center-west and Mato Grosso, Brazil's No. 1
soybean producer, tend to be more reliable even in La Nina
years but can be delayed.
    Andre Dantas, an analyst at Ceagro in Mato Grosso, said he
expected output from the region to be similar to last year's
crop, even though planting should be greater.
    "Producers will plant less early maturing soybeans and they
will likely miss out on planting a winter corn crop. The
harvest of the soy will be too late for that," Dantas said,
adding that harvest of the past crop started in mid-December.
    To plant a winter corn crop after harvesting the summer soy
crop, producers must plant the corn by January or early
February or the rains become too weak and the crop fails.
    The Mato Grosso Foundation, which supports the state's
massive farm sector with research, said; "Rains may arrive
later in the months of October and November in Mato Grosso."
    "The influence of La Nina can be negative if the producer
is not prepared and fails to use the correct method of
planting," the foundation's researcher Fabiano Siquera said.
    Analysts AgraFNP said the area for the next crop would grow
by 1.6 percent but produce only 66.6 million tonnes of
soybeans, more than 2 percent less soybeans than were harvested
this season, analyst Aedson Pereira said.
 (Reporting by Reese Ewing; Editing by Marguerita Choy)