Brasília – The Brazilian Gross Value of Agricultural Production (VBP, in the Portuguese acronym) stands at R$ 473.2 billion (US$ 122.58 billion), according to updates done in August by the Secretariat of Agricultural Policy (SPA, in the Portuguese acronym) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Mapa). The total is 1% higher than the numbers registered in 2014. The data was released this Tuesday (15th).
Livestock earnings increased 2.2% and reached R$ 169.88 billion (US$ 44.02 billion), while the 21 agricultural crops surveyed increased 0.3% in value and totaled R$ 303.34 billion (US$ 78.61 billion) , reported the general coordinator of Studies and Analysis department of the secretariat, José Garcia Gasques.
Gasques said that there’s a combination of productivity gains of grains of 5.3% over last year, although prices are lower for the majority of the agricultural commodities, hence, the increase of only 0.3% of the agricultural VBP.
The products who displayed the higher increases in value of production were: onion (147.5%), castor bean (99.4%), black pepper (58.6%), wheat (7.5%), soybean (3.7%), maize (3.4%) and coffee (1.6%). In contrast, the higher declines in earnings were registered with apple (-21.6%), grape (-19.2%), tomato (-13.8%), potato (-8.8%) and cassava (-8.3%).
Livestock displayed better results, especially due to positive results of beef, which had an increase of 10.2% in the year, besides egg and pork, said Gasques. It helped to balance out the declines of 6.5% and 3.5% in milk and poultry production, respectively.
Regional forecasts show that, considering the VBP, the top spot remains with the South with R$ 136.96 billion (US$ 35.49), followed by the Central-West with R$ 127.34 billion (US$ 33 billion), Southeast with R$ 120.11 billion (US$ 31.12 billion), Northeast with R$ 47 billion (US$ 12.18 billion) an the North with R$ 27.97 billion (US$ 7.24 billion).
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani