Brazil’s government will negotiate safety requirements for soyabean exports to China, following changes which led Cargill to cancel its Brazilian shipments to the country, according to a 17 March Reuters report.
Global agribusiness giant Cargill had suspended Brazilian soyabean exports to China due to the inspection changes made by the Brazilian government that made it difficult for traders to comply, Reuters reported the company’s Latin America head Paulo Sousa as saying on 12 March.
Sousa said Brazil's Agriculture Ministry had adopted a stricter sanitary evaluation on soyabeans bound for China to check for pests and weeds after a request from the Chinese government.
As a result, Cargill has stopped buying soyabeans from farmers in Brazil, Sousa said, since it could export them to China for the moment, Sousa said.
Brazilian Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro confirmed that Brazil had received complaints from Chinese buyers and authorities after some cargoes had shown the presence of weed seeds, and that inspections had been stepped up when the complaints persisted, Reuters wrote.
According to a 16 March report by media outlet Globo Rural, the Agriculture Ministry would be handing over some soyabean-inspection duties to shipping-supervision companies, following claims by trading firms that the tougher inspection rules made it harder to obtain export certificates.
“No rule was changed,” Favaro said. “We have the legal obligation to inspect.”
He added that vessels with pending inspections would only receive certificates if their cargoes met the standards required by China, the world’s leading soyabean importer.
Favaro said two Brazilian ministry officials were scheduled to visit China to propose a sanitary protocol.
Brazil’s aim was to negotiate terms that met China’s inspection demands, preserved the operating capacity of Brazil’s industry and minimised risks, Favaro added.
He noted the dispute did not amount to an embargo by China. “If China had intended to suspend purchases of Brazilian soyabeans, it would have suspended them. That is not the issue.”
In a previous report on 13 March citing trade sources, Reuters wrote that Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry had increased inspections on soyabean shipments to China following Beijing’s repeated findings of pesticide- and fungicide-coated beans.
According to traders, the tighter checks were slowing shipments during Brazil’s peak export season, raising costs and threatening to disrupt supplies to China.
Delays in receiving export certificates had kept ships waiting at port longer than scheduled, resulting in penalty fees, they added.
Despite this backdrop, Brazil’s soyabean shipping schedule remained largely unchanged from the previous week, according to a 17 March report by grain exporters’ group Anec. [This is correct]
Exports for the month were estimated at 16.32M tonnes, slightly below the previous week’s projection of 16.47M tonnes.
