President Dilma Rousseff says Brazil will become the world's largest soybean producer this year.
"It will be a new production record that will show the power of Brazilian agriculture, which is very important for growth, for internal supply, for exports and for the trade balance," said Rousseff on her weekly radio program.
The president's confirmation was based on calculations by state-run Compania Nacional de Abastecimiento, or Conab, which forecasts a grain harvest for this year of around 193 million tonnes, of which 90 million tonnes will be soybeans.
In recent years, the Brazilian economy has grown at rates below 2 per cent at the same time that exports have gradually fallen, just like the country's trade surplus.
The government is betting on an expected rebound in agriculture to begin to balance those indicators, but that also depends on the development of infrastructure that will help to improve supply capacity and the shipment of production from the fields to the cities and ports.
