30 October 2026, Brasília, Brazil: Brazil’s National Supply Company, Conab, the government agency responsible for official crop forecasts, projected on October 15 that the country will harvest a record 181.6 million tonnes of soybeans in the 2026/27 season, alongside a record 148.0 million tonnes of corn, even as the pace of new land coming into soybean production slows to its weakest rate in two decades.
Conab’s first field-based survey of the new season put planted soybean area at 49.3 million hectares, up 1.4% from 2025/26, which the agency itself flagged as the smallest percentage increase in farmed soybean land in 20 years. Average soybean yields are expected to fall slightly, by about 0.8%, a pullback Conab attributed partly to last season’s unusually high yields setting a tough comparison and partly to climate uncertainty heading into the new growing cycle. The agency said slower area growth reflects narrower producer margins and weaker financial incentive for farmers to clear or convert new land for soybeans after several years of softer global prices.
Corn area expands faster than soybeans
Corn told a different story. Conab projected total corn area at 23.7 million hectares, up 4.9% from the previous season, with the first-crop corn area, planted alongside soybeans early in the season, expected to rise 10.7% to 4.54 million hectares. The agency linked the stronger corn planting intentions to expectations of better domestic prices in the second half of 2026 and the possibility of stronger demand for Brazilian corn exports. Conab said the new survey’s figures broadly track an earlier trend-based outlook it had published, titled “Perspectivas para a Agropecuária 2026/2027,” though the October numbers are now based on actual field surveys rather than projections alone.
Brazil overtook the United States as the world’s largest soybean exporter several years ago and has remained the top supplier to China, the world’s biggest soybean importer, ever since. A record Brazilian crop therefore matters well beyond the country’s own borders. It tends to cap how much export premium Brazilian soybeans and corn can command, influences the price Chinese crushers are willing to pay US exporters later in the US marketing year, and shapes the cost of soybean meal and vegetable oil that flow into animal feed and cooking oil markets worldwide.
The slowdown in new soybean land, even amid record output, is itself a signal worth watching. Brazil’s soybean frontier expanded rapidly for two decades as farmers converted pasture and, more controversially, cerrado and parts of the Amazon basin into cropland. A near-flat rate of area growth suggests that expansion is running up against tighter farm economics, including higher input costs, rather than running out of available land, since Conab explicitly cited profitability rather than land scarcity as the constraint.
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