My friend who farms a bit in Central Illinois wrote to tell me he's going to have to get out there soon and just plunge into the mud. Time's running out, and you do the best you can with what you've got. Which is not totally unlike what happened this season in Mato Grosso, Brazil's biggest state for both soybeans and second-crop corn. Farmers there faced near-constant rains during the harvest of early beans, which compromised bean quality a bit, and brought fear for the…

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We all have a party story or two. One of mine is the time I lost two wheels—not just the tires, but the aluminum wheels—of a rental car when I was driving at night on Mato Grosso, Brazil, highways during harvest. Good thing I spent a couple of extra bucks for the full protection. First one enormous semi, avoiding a huge crater, moved into my lane and forced me into a crater the size of an Olympic swimming pool. No sooner had I put on the spare with no lights in the rain that…

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The trees are full of buds across Central Illinois right now, but producers can’t get in and plant without paddling a dinghy out into the fields. April, it has been said, is the cruelest month, and that’s never been more true than in the Midwest, where I’m spending my first spring in years. Despite the frustrations with so much rain, I am enjoying that spring here is a well-defined season, different from the others. That’s not so true in Brazil, where most places…

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I am visiting family and friends in Illinois, and I nearly drove into a light pole when I saw fuel prices here in Chicago. The cheapest I saw was about $4.05 a gallon – and according to one survey, the city has the highest diesel prices in the nation. That's getting close to the cost of diesel in my town in Brazil, where it sets me back $4.59 per gallon to fill up my S-10 diesel. It's worse, though, when you're putting in fuel to haul a load of soybeans hundreds of…

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If there's ever a time to get a little help from the unions, Brazil needs it now. Dock workers at Brazilian ports had stopped work briefly to protest the Brazilian government's efforts to privatize its ports. The idea is to modernize and upgrade the port system through private initiative, but port workers are concerned about losing their jobs and benefits in the process. As if Brazil's ports weren't already the center of attention. By now it's old news that…

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Even as USDA's latest Supply-Demand report made no change to U.S. soybean production, Brazil issued its new crop estimate last week. With an estimated 37% of the Brazilian soybean crop already harvested, The Ministry of Agriculture's Conab agency lowered its soybean production estimate by 1.6% to 82.1 million tonnes. It blamed dry weather in parts of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul states, but that number is still up nearly 24% from last season due to a larger planted area and more…

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Brazil harvest update: The most recent report on the 24 million-ton Mato Grosso soybean harvest indicates 17% of the state crop is in, versus 24% for the same week of last year. Heavy and constant rains in some parts of the state have hurt quality and yield, with some beans sprouting right in the pods. That said, a government agency issued a revised national 2012-13 crop estimate recently, of 83.4 million tons. When Brazil sets out on a project, it's usually on an epic…

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I'm on tour in Brazil with Farm Futures this week and I wanted to give you a preview of our cover story on Brazil, hitting mailboxes later this week. But first, here's a crop update: rains are slowing up the harvest of the earliest beans in much of Mato Grosso, after the season's first beans were brought in. Rust outbreaks are increasing, and one Mato Grosso Ag leader said yields are going to come down a bit as a result. More rain was in the forecast. Despite such concerns…

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Rains are slowing up the harvest of the earliest beans in much of Mato Grosso, after the season's first beans were brought in. Rust outbreaks are increasing, and one Mato Grosso ag leader said state yields are going to drop a bit as a result. More rain was in the forecast for this week. Despite such concerns, 2012-13 soybean crop size estimates keep climbing, with one consultancy putting this season's Brazilian bean production as high as 84 million tonnes. It's early yet, but…

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My first journalism professor in college said (over and over, during the course of the semester) that Dog Bites Man is not a news story. Man Bites Dog, on the other hand, might be. And so it is with Ag news back and forth between the world's top soybean, corn and ethanol producers—the U.S. and Brazil. Reading stories about the worst of the worst cases, farmers here could be forgiven for thinking U.S. production would be something close to zero instead of getting yields that…

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