Brazil's newest soya frontier, the Matopiba region stretching across four northern states, is contributing to a record crop this year as good weather spurs a recovery in agricultural yields after several drought-hit seasons. Matopiba - a word formed by the initials of Maranho, Tocantins, Piau and Bahia - has just started the soya harvest, later than the main soya regions in Brazil.

The region suffered heavy losses due to a dry spell last season when it produced 12.17 million tonnes of soya. The situation is different now. "We are expecting to harvest the best crop ever for Bahia," Jo Carlos Jacobsen, a pioneer in grains farming in North/Northeast Brazil, told Reuters after greeting members of a crop tour visiting his farm in Barreiras, Bahia.

Due in part to the good prospects in the area, tour organizer Agroconsult raised its projection for Brazil's soya crop in 2016/17 to 111 million tonnes on Monday. Matopiba is considered the area with the highest growth potential for cultivated land in Brazil. Producers from other regions have bought land here in recent years, looking to develop large-scale modern production systems similar to those in Mato Grosso. Projections from Brazil's Agriculture Ministry indicate planted area could grow from 4.16 million hectares currently to as much as 10.3 million hectares in 10 years. Output could top 30 million tonnes of grains by then.

But the expansion might take form at a slower pace, since production was not good last year or the season before that. "If it weren't for the drought, we would already be planting in the whole farm," Fernando Fritzen, a soya producer holding 24,000 hectares in Gilbus, Piau state, told Reuters. He planted 19,000 hectares in the current crop. "But we will resume investments in 2018, thank to this good crop we are harvesting," he said.

Copyright Reuters, 2017