Brazil grows a record corn crop and keeps more of it at home
Conab's first 2026/27 balance adds 3.5 Mt to Brazil's corn crop and nearly twice that to domestic use, led by ethanol. Exports have stopped growing with the harvest, and this season's shipments already run well behind plan.
Conab's first balance sheet for 2026/27 puts Brazil's corn crop at a record 148 Mt, 3.5 Mt more than this season, and hands almost twice that increase to Brazil's own users. Domestic use rises 6.5 Mt to 104.8, while exports gain 2.1 Mt to 46.
Brazil's demand now outgrows its crop
This is not a one-year shift. Domestic use has grown by roughly 5 to 8% a year since 2019/20, and on a base this size that now means 6.5 to 7.2 Mt more every season since 2024/25. The crop has not kept up: after the 2024/25 rebound, the last two harvests have added 3.3 and 3.5 Mt. Against 2022/23, the crop is 16 Mt bigger, domestic use 25 Mt bigger, and exports 8.6 Mt below that season's 54.6.
Ethanol is doing most of the pulling. Brazilian plants used 21.8 Mt of corn in 2024/25, almost three times the 7.7 of 2020/21, about 70% of the growth in domestic use over those four years. From February to August this season they took 14.7 Mt, 22% more than over the same months last year.
This season's exports are already behind
The shipping data shows the same pull in real time. From June to September Brazil exported 12.2 Mt of corn, 28% of the 43.9 Mt Conab still expects for the season, where a normal year has more than 40% gone by the end of September. The safrinha came in at its usual pace, and China, missing from the market this year, was already missing last year when Brazil kept its normal rhythm.
Our reading: an export line that asks a lot
To reach 43.9 Mt, Brazil has to ship 31.7 Mt from October to May, more than over the same months of 2022/23, a season Conab closed at 54.6 Mt of exports. Our reading is that this line will be hard to fill, and that the corn not shipped stays in the country, where ethanol plants can afford to keep bidding: their margin on a tonne of corn has risen from 56 to 99 $/t since late August. If that holds, US and Argentine cargoes face less Brazilian corn this winter than the record crop suggests. Three signals in our data will show how it resolves:
- Brazil's October shipments. September added 5.2 Mt. A month well above last October's 6.5 would start to close the gap; another month near September's would leave the export line little room.
- Corn used for ethanol. The ANP data runs to August. Plants still running around a fifth above last year would confirm that the domestic pull is what is holding the grain back.
- Conab's November report. A cut to exports moved into domestic use would confirm the reading. A cut that lands in ending stocks instead would mean Brazil is holding corn it cannot sell, which is a different story.
GrainBoard modules used in this note
For information only. Not investment advice.
Built with GrainBoard data
The supply & demand, trade-flow and price data behind this note, in one analytical workspace.