The rains have arrived across most of Brazil's row cropping regions, and the weather pattern now resembles a more typical summer rainy season.
The increased precipitation has come just as the bulk of the country's soybean crop is setting and filling pods.
This is putting Brazilian farmers on-track to harvest a record soybean crop, and easing concerns about South American soybean supplies.
A recent poll of 13 leading market analysts pegged the Brazilian soybean crop at a 132.2 million tonnes, which was up from the December forecast of 131.8 million tonnes.
This would eclipse the previous record of 126 million tonnes produced in 2020.
Yields in the top producing state of Mato Grosso are expected to be lower than last year. But an improved outlook in several other states is expected to compensate for these production losses.
The latest US Department of Agriculture (USDA) forecast for Brazilian soybeans is on the high side, at 133 million tonnes.
There are still areas in Brazil that are in moisture deficit, but conditions are generally favourable in the central and northern parts of the country for the remaining crop.
Some areas have been abandoned to soybeans and replanted to cotton. But any paddocks not sprayed-out by now will go through to harvest.
Extremely heavy rain and flooding in the southern states of Parana and Rio Grande do Sul are raising concerns, and there is more rain forecast.
Some areas have received more than 500 millimetres of rain in the past 20 days, and some farmers have had to do up to five fungicide applications to control disease outbreaks.
This will potentially lead to production downgrades and quality issues across an area that produces about a third of the country's soybean output.
While the recent rains are certainly welcome, and will help to finish the crop, they further delay the soybean harvest.
This season's crop was planted late in many regions, following an extremely dry start to the sowing season, and had already delayed the start of harvest by about two weeks.
The poor planting conditions and staggered germination have also led to varying levels of crop maturity within paddocks, which is making harvest difficult.
Harvest is underway in Mato Grosso, but it is not at full pace as yet. As of late last week, estimates put its harvest progress at just 5 per cent - compared to 27 per cent at the same time last year.
The rain in the south is expected to delay the start of harvest in those states by at least two weeks.
With more rain on the forecast, the delays are expected to continue into February - raising concerns about export flows.
Local analysts suggest that no more than five million tonnes of soybeans was harvested by the end of January, which was less than half of the stocks available for export at the same time in 2020.
And the pace of harvest is not expected to normalise until late February, or even into early March.
As a result, the vessel line-up to load soybeans out of Brazilian ports has reportedly increased to almost nine million tonnes.
This comes in a season where prices have been so attractive for the Brazilian farmers that they have forward sold about 60 per cent of their soybean crop ahead of harvest. This is about 20 percentage points above the historical average for the period.
Maybe four vessels finished loading and sailed in January, compared to 13 in 2020.
Exporters are concerned that the delays will now affect February shipments, which typically reach five or six million tonnes.
The sluggish start to harvest, and competing demand from domestic crushers, means that actual February shipments to China may fall short by as much as two or three million tonnes.
And there is already one million tonnes that didn't get shipped in January and that will now be pushed into February.
Demand will probably be recouped at the end of the Brazilian shipping season.
But the Chinese continue to buy US soybeans for February and March shipment due to delays.
Further interruptions may push another round of soybean sales to the US to make up for Brazil's nearby export shortfall.
This only exacerbates the supply problems facing the US this summer.
The bottom line is that the US is in real danger of running out of soybeans at the current sales pace and, in all likelihood, will require imports to bridge the supply gap to its new crop.
There is already talk in the trade that imports of Brazilian soybeans for June are getting very close to working at current values. This will be an exciting space to watch.
On another front, it wouldn't be a typical summer crop harvest in Brazil without the threat of a trucker's strike.
Brazil's National Confederation of Transport and Logistics Workers (CNTTL), which has 800,000 members, was still calling for an all-out strike from Monday of this week over the rising cost of diesel.
Higher global oil prices, coupled with Brazil's weakening currency, have driven up local diesel prices.
But the likelihood of a strike proceeding dropped as a split emerged last week over the merits of the action.
The late soybean harvest in Brazil becomes a massive issue for global corn supply.
Brazil's safrinha corn crop is planted after the soybeans have been harvested, and represents about 75 per cent of its output.
As planting has been delayed by as much as a month, it means that some corn will be planted well outside of the ideal seeding window.
This increases production risk, as it pushes the crop further into the drier autumn months of April and May - and delays export onset.
One big difference this year is the price being paid to the Brazilian farmer for corn.
The weakening currency has pushed prices higher, ensuring the crop gets planted - as growers can still make a profit, even if yields drop significantly due to the later seeding.
Corn has just had the longest run of monthly gains in more than a decade as Brazil's planting issues, coupled with a Chinese buying spree, have further tightened global supply.
During just last week, the Chinese purchased about six million tonnes of US corn - and further sales are anticipated.
Delays in the availability of Brazilian corn - and political interference to limit exports from the Ukraine, and possibly Argentina - pushes even more demand to the US.
Surely February will be the month of reckoning for the USDA, which has been well behind the eight ball on both its estimate for total Chinese corn imports (at 17.5 million tonnes) and total US corn exports for the 2020-21 marketing year.
Before last week's buying binge, the US had already sold 11.8 million tonnes of corn to China and a further 7.9 million tonnes to the sister state - conveniently referred to as "unknown".
The sustained increase in corn values should be - and needs to be - rationing global demand. But last week's market action suggests otherwise.
US corn is the cheapest feed grain in the world right now, and the delay to planting in Brazil only extends its supply window by another month.
Corn should now become the rally leader - or at least gain on soybeans - in the fight to ration global demand and buy area in the next Northern Hemisphere planting program.
