EN 
PT_BR 
In 2025, a producer of soy I needed something between 28 and 32 sacks to buy a ton of UreaIn 2026, that number was expected to reach the range of 35 to 40 sacks, according to Itaú BBA's Agro Consulting firm, even with the price of... soy rising throughout the year.
It is this indicator, and not the isolated price, that explains why an entire crop disappears from one year to the next in Rio Grande do Sul.
What is an exchange relationship?
The terms of trade are how many units of what you produce are needed to buy one unit of what you buy. A smaller number means greater purchasing power. A larger number means less purchasing power.
It's the same concept that economists call terms of trade when applied to entire countries, with the advantage that on the farm it becomes a concrete measure: sacks, arrobas, tons. It also answers a question that the nominal price doesn't answer. soy Is R$ priced at 149.00 per sack a good or bad price? It entirely depends on how much it costs. Urea.
The numbers for 2026
The situation deteriorated throughout the year in virtually all prisons.
According to a survey by Itaú BBA's Agro Consulting firm, in soy the relationship with Urea It increased from a range of 28 to 32 sacks per ton in 2025 to 35 to 40 sacks in 2026. With the map, it went from 25 to 30 sacks to 30 to 35. With the Potassium chlorideFrom 18 to 22 to 20 to 25. No cornthe relationship with the Urea It went from the range of 50 to 60 sacks per ton in 2025 to 60 to 70 sacks in 2026.
In livestock farming, the trend was the same. The relationship between fattened cattle and the... map It increased from 12 to 15 arrobas per ton in 2025 to 14 to 18 arrobas in 2026, and with the Urea...from 14 to 17 arrobas to 16 to 20 arrobas. Coffee was the partial exception, with Arabica maintaining a relationship with the... Urea yields close to two sacks per ton, a better performance than that observed in grains.
Why do different consulting firms give different answers?
You will find surveys with very different values for the same exchange rate, in the same month, and this is not an error on the part of any of them.
In March 2026, a survey indicated that Urea requiring 32 sacks of soy or 59 sacks of corn per ton, compared to 17 and 33 sacks a year earlier, using the price in reais per ton CFR port in Brazil. Scot Consultoria, in February, was working with 35 sacks of soy per ton of map, compared to 31.8 bags in 2025, considering fertilizers in granular form. StoneX, also in February, estimated 36 bags of corn per ton of Urea.
The difference stems from three methodological choices: which commodity price market was used, whether the fertilizer is quoted CFR port or farm gate, and on what date the photo was taken. The terms of trade are not a single number for Brazil, but rather a number specific to your region, your date, and your point of purchase. What all surveys point to in the same direction is a worsening situation.
Where did the pressure on fertilizers come from?
Fertilizers have become decoupled from agricultural commodities for reasons that do not originate in the Brazilian countryside. In May 2026, the Urea It was trading at around US$ 765 per ton CFR Brazil, while the map It exceeded US$1,000 per ton in raw materials and the Potassium chloride It accumulated gains exceeding US$$ 100 year-on-year. Conflicts in the Middle East, trade restrictions imposed by China and Russia, and the volatility of oil and liquefied natural gas kept inputs at high levels.
THE Potassium It was the least affected. August benchmarks placed KCl CFR Brazil in the range of US$ 400 to US$ 405 per ton, with a lower risk of violent movements, as it did not suffer a direct impact from the conflict.
Asymmetry matters: nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers have risen due to natural gas and geopolitics, variables over which the Brazilian producer has no control, and yet it is he who ultimately pays the price for fertilization.
The case of wheatin which the terms of trade became official statistics.
Conab estimates Brazilian production of wheat In 2026, the crop is projected to reach 5.8 million tons, a decrease of 26.21% compared to 2025, resulting from a 20.41% reduction in the area dedicated to the cereal. Safras & Mercado estimates an area of 1.9 million hectares, a decrease of 20% compared to the previous year, with a production of 5.86 million tons, a decrease of 27.9%, and an average yield of 3,073 kilograms per hectare.
In Rio Grande do Sul, currently the main national producer, the planted area fell by 28.61 TP4T, to 750,000 hectares, with an estimated production of 2.4 million tons, a decrease of 33.31 TP4T. In Paraná, the area decreased by 13.51 TP4T, to 740,000 hectares, with a production of 2.2 million tons.
Safras & Mercado's own explanation for the decline is straightforward: worsening of the relationship between production costs and prices received, a significant increase in fertilizers, especially nitrogen fertilizers, the impact of geopolitical tensions in the Middle East on inputs, domestic prices pressured by ample international supply, and increasing competition from... wheat Imported goods and successive harvests with reduced or negative margins. It wasn't a weather problem, but a margin problem.
The price reacted after the crop had already been reduced.
The producer who abandoned the wheat He made the right decision for his harvest. Taken together, these individual decisions created the scenario of restricted supply that caused the price to rise.
With a smaller harvest, domestic prices remained firm. On August 28, Safras & Mercado reported indications of R$ 1,400 to R$ 1,450 per ton in the Campos Gerais region of Paraná, with the harvest still in its initial stage and low liquidity. Abroad, the cereal reached US$ 7.05 per bushel in Chicago in July, the highest value since July 27, 2023, and the USDA reduced its estimate of US production to 41.7 million tons on August 12, a drop of 23%.
This behavior has a name in economic theory: the spider web model. The producer decides when to plant by looking at the previous year's price and harvests in a market formed by the simultaneous decisions of everyone. This is why monitoring the terms of trade at planting time is more informative than monitoring prices at harvest time.
The cost of money is factored into the same account.
There is one item that almost never appears in terms of trade spreadsheets, but which will be quite significant in 2026: the cost of credit.
The Copom (Monetary Policy Committee) reduced the Selic rate to 14% per year on August 5, 2026, in the fourth consecutive cut of the cycle, in a unanimous decision, and the Central Bank itself classifies the level as restrictive. The Focus Bulletin of August 24 projects the rate at 13.75% at the end of the year.
For those who access subsidized credit, the impact is mitigated. The 2026/2027 Harvest Plan for agribusiness brought rates that fell from 14% to 12.5% and from 10% to 9% per year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. For those who finance inputs outside these lines, with barter, CPR (Rural Product Certificate) or bank working capital, the financial cost enters the margin exactly as fertilizer does. The margin of a crop depends on three variables: the price received, the cost of inputs, and the cost of money, and monitoring only the first gives an incomplete picture.
How to calculate your own terms of trade
The calculation is simple and can be repeated every week. Take the price per ton of fertilizer delivered in your region, in reais (Brazilian currency), and divide it by the price per sack of your crop in your market, also in reais. The result is how many sacks you deliver per ton of input.
An example with round numbers, just to illustrate the method: fertilizer at R$ 4,000 per ton and soy At R$ 150 per sack, this results in 26.7 sacks per ton. If the fertilizer increases to R$ 4,400 and the... soy If you continue with R$ 150, you will need 29.3 bags. The price of soy Nothing changed, and purchasing power fell by about 10%.
Two practical recommendations. Always use the same market and delivery point reference over time, or the series will mean nothing. And keep the historical data, because today's isolated number tells you little, while the twelve-month trajectory tells you almost everything.
What remains:
THE wheat Brazilians lost a fifth of their planted area in one year because of the relationship between what the producer received and what they paid, and the price only reacted later, when the area had already been reduced. Nominal price does not determine what is planted. The profit margin does, and the terms of trade are the simplest way to measure it before the planting decision, not after.
