Russia, for the first time ever, has become one of the top five sources of grain for Brazil.
That’s according to a Russian media analysis released Saturday based on data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, Brazil’s official statistical agency.
Figures show that between January and July 2023, Brazil imported 380,000 tons of wheat and meslin (a rye/wheat mixture) from Russia worth roughly $108.5 million.
The purchases were enough to put Russia on the map as the fourth-largest source of grain for Brazil overall, behind only Argentina (about 2 million tons worth $736.3 million), Paraguay (886,000 tons worth $290 million), and Uruguay (544,000 tons for $211 million). The United States rounded out the top five, selling roughly 80,000 tons of grain, worth $20.85 million, to its Western Hemisphere neighbor.
Brazil turned to non-Mercosur Southern Common Market members for its wheat needs last year following Argentina’s unprecedented crop failures, which curtailed production and compromised exports, which ordinarily reach as much as 6 million tons per year.
As the second-largest beef producer in the world, Brazil is heavily dependent on grain imports, for both bread and feed grain, with consumption reaching as much as 12 million tons per year, short of the estimated 9-9.5 million tons the country is able to produce domestically. In the 2022/2023 crop season, major Brazilian grain producer Parana suffered major losses due to rain, further increasing the need for imports.
US-led Efforts to Smother Russian Trade Fail
The United States and its allies have led a global effort aimed at suffocating Russian exports, including grain and fertilizers, with the restrictions serving as one of the reasons Russia moved to suspend its participation in the Black Sea Grain Deal in July (the other being that the vast majority of Ukrainian grain sold through the deal was going to wealthy Western nations, not needy countries in the Global South). Last month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized that “Brazil’s voice” would be “critical” to convincing Russia to return to the Grain Deal.
The ramping up of Russian grain exports to Brazil echoes Russian successes in reorienting other exports over the past year, with Moscow selling tens of billions of dollars’ worth of oil and gas to India and China, turning into Delhi’s biggest oil supplier overnight. At the same time, restrictions on imports of Western finished goods have led Russia to reorient toward Asia, find alternative sources of supply using so-called parallel imports, and, where possible, to create new domestic manufacturing capabilities. At the same time, Western dependence on Russian resources like natural gas and uranium remains high, with a new report this week concluding that the European Union’s purchases of Russian LNG have jumped nearly 40 percent, accounting for some 52 percent of Russia’s total exports between January and July 2023.
Along with reducing dependence on Western markets in favor of the Global South, Russia has sought to ensure that transactions take place in alternative payments systems, including local currencies.