Brazil

Soybean growers in Brazil, driven by higher domestic prices, will expand plantings for the tenth year in a row and reap a record 100 million tonnes of the oilseed, said USDA. Brazil is second to the United States as a soybean grower but the world leader in soybean exports.

Farm subsidies in China, India, Brazil and Turkey cost U.S. wheat growers nearly $1 billion in revenue annually, says a study commissioned by two U.S. wheat groups.

Five weeks after reports that construction was underway for the world's largest dairy farm in northeastern China, a Dutch multimillionaire says he will build the world's largest dairy farm in southern Brazil.

China is a tiny market for ethanol imports but producers in the United States and Brazil are stirred by an upturn in sales, says Reuters.

Brazil, second to the United States in food and agricultural exports, "is poised to become the foremost supplier in meeting additional global demand, mostly originating from Asia," says the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2015-2024.

Few major achievements are expected during a fence-mending visit by Brazil president Dilma Rousseff to the United States this week, including a bilateral meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, says McClatchy.

U.S. soybean exports are headed for a record 1.77 billion bushels this marketing year, nearly 45 percent of the largest crop ever grown by U.S. farmers, says USDA. If the estimate proves true, exports would be 7 percent larger than last season.

Brazil, No 2 to the United States as a soybean producer, will reap a record 95.5 million tonnes of the oilseed, forecasts USDA - 10 percent than its previous crop.

Katia Abreu, a former head of the largest farm lobbying group in Brazil, is the first woman to be appointed agriculture minister of the world's largest coffee, sugar and beef exporter, says Bloomberg.

At least three-quarters of the forests of the world have been cut down or damaged, says the New York Times in a two-page story that says...

Brazil's soybean belt is critically short of rainfall, in the view of consultancy Oil World, which sees a harvest of 89 million tonnes this season, said AgriMoney.

With China scaling back on its imports of cotton, world prices "dipped below 70 cents in early October, a level not seen in five years," said USDA, forecasting a 6 percent cent increase in global cotton stocks this marketing year.

With Abebgoa to open its $300 million celllulosic ethanol plant in Kansas on Friday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune says there is worry within the industry that debut of large-scale cellulosic plants in the United States may also be the closing act for big plants domestically.

At least one soybean exporter in Brazil has agreed to collect royalties for Monsanto, the giant seed company, from growers who plant biotech seeds that contain Monsanto's traits, said Reuters, citing industry sources.

Brazil agreed to end a decade-old World Trade Organization case against U.S. cotton subsidies and to a peace clause for the life of the 2014 farm law in exchange for $300 million and technical assistance for its cotton sector.

Biodiesel production is booming in Brazil and Argentina and will put a pinch on exports of soybean oil, the feedstock for making the biofuel, says the Agriculture Department. Biodiesel is forecast to consume one-third of soy oil in the two countries during this marketing year, double the amount that was used six years ago. "In contrast, exports are forecast to fall from more than half of total use to just over 40 percent over the same period," said USDA'S "Oilseeds: World Markets and Trade" report. Brazil and Argentina are the largest soybean producers in the world after the United States.

The U.S. soybean crop could be as much as 6 percent smaller than now forecast if yields drop slightly or if plantings turn out to be smaller than reported, say projections presented at a Kansas State University risk-management conference.

The new subsidy STAX will be available to upland cotton growers beginning with the 2015 crop, said USDA's Risk Management Agency in a bulletin to insurers and its field offices.