According to figures released in Brazil’s Agrologistic Yearbook for 2005, corn and soybean exports from the country’s northern region have more than doubled in the past half decade. Ports in the so-called Northern Arc have seen exports rise from 36.7 million tonnes in 2020 to 57.6 million tonnes last year. This growth is attributed to increased investment in multimodal infrastructure, which encompasses both rail and increasingly inland waterways in the Amazon region.
Much of the export produce is produced in the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, grouped domestically under the MATOPIBA moniker. The northern states are now being seen as a much more cohesive entity in overall agricultural production.
The Yearbook notes that, in 2024, Northern Arc ports such as Itaqui, Barcarena and Santarém, when added to established giants Santos and Paranaguá (PR), accounted for 81.2% of Brazilian soybean and corn exports. Of this, on their own, ports in the country’s north accounted for about 38% of the whole.
There are also notable differences in the performance of the emerging northern ports. At Itaqui and Barcarena, growth in the volume of corn and soybean exported in the 2020 - 2024 period was 80.3% and 70.3% respectively.
The situation in Maranhão is also distinct. There, volume increases are down almost purely to enhanced rail links, with volumes up from 11.21 million tons in 2020 to 20.22 million in 2024.