--- mi_id: MIMR-node_e66d809 type: market_report canonical_url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/agriculture-agritech/animal-nutrition-feed/market-report/brazil-animal-feed-market/" md_url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/agriculture-agritech/animal-nutrition-feed/market-report/brazil-animal-feed-market.md" schema: "@type": Dataset "@id": MIMR-node_e66d809 url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/agriculture-agritech/animal-nutrition-feed/market-report/brazil-animal-feed-market/" title: "Brazil Animal Feed Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033" description: "Brazil animal feed market: 94 Mt in 2025 and 97 Mt in 2026, reaching 114.5 Mt and USD 58.08 billion by 2033. Broiler feed is 40.31% of volume and 41.67% of growth. Species, value chain, cost structure, regulation and risk." datePublished: "2026-10-23T15:09:22+00:00" dateModified: "2026-10-23T15:09:49+00:00" keywords: - Brazil animal feed market - Brazil compound feed - racao Brasil - Sindiracoes - poultry feed Brazil - swine feed Brazil - beef cattle feed - confinement Brazil - feed cost Brazil - animal nutrition Brazil isPartOf: - id: MISG-node_eee6eb6 type: CollectionPage url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/agriculture-agritech/animal-nutrition-feed/" name: "Animal Nutrition & Feed" - id: MIIN-node_25bc9e9 type: CollectionPage url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/agriculture-agritech/" name: "Agriculture & Agritech" - id: MIWS-root type: WebSite url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/" name: Pheonix Research mentions: - id: MIEN-node_969ea470 type: Organization url: "https://www.dsm-firmenich.com" name: dsm-firmenich sameAs: - "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q120091633" - id: MIEN-node_35ee6191 type: Organization url: "https://www.deheus.com.br" name: De Heus sameAs: - "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q13571271" - id: MIMR-node_fa2b989 type: Dataset url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/agriculture-agritech/animal-nutrition-feed/market-report/global-animal-feed-market/" name: "Global Animal Feed Market Report, Size & Forecast 2026-2033" - id: MIMR-node_0e37d79 type: Dataset url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/agriculture-agritech/animal-nutrition-feed/market-report/latin-america-animal-feed-market/" name: "Latin America Animal Feed Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033" - id: MIMR-node_2f823aa type: Dataset url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/chemicals-materials/phosphorus-phosphate-derivatives/market-report/feed-phosphates-market/" name: "Global Feed Phosphates (DCP, MCP, MDCP, DFP) Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033" - id: MIMR-node_817be2f type: Dataset url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/food-beverages/oils-seeds-sweeteners/market-report/colombia-soybean-grain-market/" name: "Colombia Soybean Grain Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033" - id: MIMR-node_8098e16 type: Dataset url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/food-beverages/alternative-plant-based-proteins/market-report/global-insect-protein-market/" name: "Global Insect Protein Market Report, Size & Forecast 2026-2033" - id: MIMR-node_0105432 type: Dataset url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/agriculture-agritech/fertiliser/market-report/global-black-soldier-fly-bsf-market/" name: "Global Black Soldier Fly (BSF) Market Report, Size & Forecast 2026-2033" - id: MIMR-node_87c7c4c type: Dataset url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/food-beverages/dairy-products/market-report/global-dairy-market/" name: Global Dairy Market size and share Analysis 2026-2033 about: - "@type": Thing name: Market Intelligence mi_id: "MIMR-node_e66d809#intelligence" - "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1901028" base_year: 2025 forecast_year: 2033 value_base_year: 42.15 value_forecast_year: 58.08 value_cagr: 4.09 value_currency: USD acf: base_year: 2025 forecast_year: 2033 value_base_year: 42.15 value_forecast_year: 58.08 value_cagr: 4.09 value_currency: USD coverage_type: Country coverage_name: Brazil competitive_intensity_level: high market_structure_type: fragmented tier1_player_count: 10 investment_trend_direction: rising capital_intensity_level: high recent_mna_activity: yes overall_market_risk_level: Medium geopolitical_exposure_level: High substitution_risk_level: Low regulatory_complexity_level: High innovation_intensity_level: Medium technology_maturity_stage: Mature patent_activity_level: Low supply_chain_complexity_level: Medium executive_summary: "Brazil's feed industry reaches 97 million tonnes in 2026, up 3.19% on 94 million in 2025 and 6.59% on 91 million in 2024, and 114.5 million tonnes by 2033. On the global revenue-per-tonne benchmark of USD 448.45 the market is worth USD 42.15 billion in 2025 and USD 58.08 billion in 2033 — a 4.09% value CAGR on 2.50% volume growth. The composition is narrower than the growth rate suggests. Broiler feed is 40.31% of the market and delivers 41.67% of the 2026 increment; broilers and swine together are 64.12%. The only shrinking block is the residual of mineral salts, equine and minor species, which falls from 5.20 to 4.86 to 4.79 million tonnes across 2024-2026 and from 5.71% to 4.94% of the pile. One constraint binds and three variables decide conversion. Feed is 62.51% of a Parana broiler producer's cost and 72.52% of a Santa Catarina pig producer's (Embrapa CIAS, July 2026), which leaves the milling industry a conversion envelope of 15.25% to 21.65% of revenue — and a 7.5% currency move swings that envelope by 6.40 points. Geography matters as much: a Campinas mill pays R$14.06 more per sack of corn than a Cascavel mill, worth R$90.83 per tonne of feed. The variables are China's 1.1 million tonne beef safeguard, an export share of chicken production rising from 32.17% to 33.74%, and whether confinement reaches 10 million head at a falling 0.823 tonnes of feed per head." toc: " " competitive_landscape_content: "

Who owns the tonne

Brazil's feed industry is often described as consolidating. It is consolidating at the ingredient and protein layers, and it remains stubbornly fragmented at the mill. Those are different industries with different economics, and reading one as the other is the commonest mistake made about this market.

No company publishes Brazilian feed volume, so we do not publish shares. What can be described with evidence is the structure: who owns feed capacity, what they do with it, and where disclosed capital has gone.

Tier one: integrated protein companies with captive mills

The largest feed producers in Brazil are not feed companies. They are chicken, pork and beef processors who mill for their own animals and sell the surplus into the merchant market. The 2025 consolidation made this tier larger: on 5 September 2025 CADE cleared the merger of BRF into Marfrig without restrictions, creating MBRF Global Foods Company S.A., which combines Marfrig's beef and processed-protein business with BRF's poultry, swine and processed-food operations. CADE's reasoning is worth noting for what it says about structure: horizontal overlaps were below 20% and each vertical-stage share below 30% — thresholds that would have been impossible to meet in a genuinely concentrated milling market.

JBS, the world's largest beef producer, and Minerva operate their own feed and supplement capacity for the same reason. When feed is 62.5% to 72.5% of your cost, owning the mill is a margin strategy, not a supply strategy. A captive mill is also a procurement weapon: an integrator that can buy corn at harvest, store it and price its own feed below the merchant market for as long as its balance sheet allows.

The number that matters here is not a share, it is a decision. MBRF now concentrates a very large poultry and swine feed order book inside one balance sheet. Whether merchant feed demand rises or falls depends entirely on how much of that combined company's feed stays captive — and management has not disclosed it. For an independent miller in Paraná, that single undisclosed ratio is a larger competitive variable than any rival's capacity.

Tier two: international agri-feed groups

De Heus is the clearest case of a European feed group building a Brazilian position rather than buying one. It runs six plants — two in Rio Claro (SP), plus Apucarana (PR), Toledo (PR), Guararapes (SP) and Itaberaí (GO) — with an administrative office in Campinas, an experimental pig-nutrition centre and a distribution centre in Bezerros (PE). Its Toledo unit was rebuilt through 2025 with new exhaustion systems, enlarged premix and medication weighing rooms, external silos and two dedicated pelleting lines, and is deliberately ractopamine-free because several export markets prohibit the additive. That last detail is the strategy in miniature: a mill built around the strictest customer's specification so that it can serve every customer.

Cargill, Bunge and ADM compete a layer up, in origination and processing, and selectively in feed and premix. ADM's Paraná nutrient facility lifting production by 40% is the pattern: the internationals invest where an ingredient position converts into a formulated product, not in commodity milling.

Tier three: national independents with real capacity

Brazil's independents are larger than outsiders assume. Agroceres Multimix opened its ninth plant at Quatro Pontes (PR) with more than R$100 million invested, 65,000 square metres of built area and capacity above 10,000 tonnes a month; phase one makes poultry and swine feed and concentrates, with ruminant nutrition, núcleos and premixes to follow. Guabi, fifty years old in 2024, runs five plants — Sales Oliveira (SP), Além Paraíba (MG), Pará de Minas (MG), Anápolis (GO) and Rondonópolis (MT) — and completed a refurbishment programme across all five.

Sindirações' roughly 140 member companies account for about 90% of the Brazilian market, which tells you two things at once: the association is genuinely representative, and no single member dominates it.

The additive and premix layer

This is the most concentrated part of the chain and the one where dependency has been falling. dsm-firmenich leads the Brazilian cattle-supplement market through its Tortuga brand and has localised production: a plant at Sete Lagoas (MG), opened 17 October 2024, with 100,000 tonnes a year of beef and dairy supplement capacity, 40,000 square metres of site and 12,000 square metres built. Its FarmTell platform — more than 15,000 users across 6,000 farms monitoring over 5 million animals — is the clearest evidence that feed selling in Brazil is becoming a data business. Beyond dsm-firmenich, the amino acid, vitamin and enzyme layer is supplied by a small group of European and Chinese producers through distributors, which is why additive availability here is a function of global plant economics rather than of Brazilian demand.

What the structure means for competition

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From a 361.7 million tonne harvest to a feeder

Brazilian feed has one structural advantage over every competitor in the world: the grain is grown in the same country, often in the same state. CONAB's twelfth grain survey for 2025/26 puts the national harvest at 361.7 million tonnes, up 2.6%, on 83.5 million hectares. Within it, soy reaches a record 180.4 million tonnes (+5.2%) with exports of 116.2 million tonnes, corn reaches 144 million tonnes (+2.0%) of which 112.1 million is the second crop, and sorghum jumps 20.4% to 7.35 million tonnes on a 32.9% increase in planted area.

The chain has a cheap, bulky base and a small, expensive tip. The bulk decides whether a mill is competitive; the tip decides whether it earns anything.

Energy: corn, and the safrinha that makes Brazil the low-cost origin

Corn is the base of nearly every Brazilian ration, at an implied 38.76% inclusion across the national feed basket — 387.6 kilograms per tonne of finished feed, derived from the industry's own sensitivity that each R$1.00 on the 60-kilogram sack moves feed cost by R$6.46 a tonne. The safrinha, the second crop that delivers 112.1 of the 144 million tonnes, is the single most important supplier relationship in the market: it arrives close to the mills of the Center-West, it is priced for export parity rather than domestic scarcity, and it disappears entirely in a bad year.

Sorghum is the hedge. At R$45.00 a sack in Rio Verde (GO) against corn at R$50.24 in Cascavel (PR) on 22 October 2026, sorghum trades at 89.57% of corn — a 10.43% discount that is roughly, but not exactly, offset by its lower energy density. The 32.9% area increase is best read as farmers buying insurance against a corn price they do not control, not as an arbitrage. For a formulator it is a substitution option worth holding; for a crusher it is a warning.

Protein: the crush margin is pulled two ways at once

Soybean meal comes from Brazil's own crush, and the crush margin is being pulled in opposite directions. Food and feed demand sets the meal side; biodiesel and renewable diesel demand sets the oil side. A strong oil pull raises crush volumes and cheapens meal, which is good for feed buyers. A weak one does the reverse. On 22 October 2026 meal was quoted at R$2,038 a tonne in Cascavel (Deral) — unusually low against the oilseed price, which is exactly the condition that makes a nutritionist reach for crystalline amino acids instead.

The protein substitution mechanism is the most valuable technique in the value chain and the one we size separately in Global Feed Phosphates: every percentage point of soybean meal removed from a ration by adding lysine, methionine and phytase is a direct transfer of value from the crusher to the additive producer, with the mill capturing only a fraction as fee.

Minerals and additives: where the margin sits

Dicalcium and monocalcium phosphate supply the phosphorus and calcium that cereal and oilseed rations lack, and the price mechanism behind them is set by sulfur, phosphate rock and Chinese export policy rather than by feed demand. Amino acids are the other half of the substitution story. Both categories are supplied by a small group of global producers selling into a country that until recently imported almost all of its premix — which is why dsm-firmenich's 100,000 tonnes at Sete Lagoas is the most strategically interesting plant built in Brazil this cycle.

Origination and trade

The ingredient layer consolidated sharply in 2025. Bunge closed its USD 34 billion merger with Viterra on 2 July 2025, creating a crop trading and processing group explicitly positioned to rival ADM and Cargill in connecting origination to consumption — and Brazil is one of the origination markets that mattered most in the deal's logic. For a feed mill, the practical consequence is fewer independent counterparties for meal and a longer contractual chain between the farm that grew the bean and the mill that buys it.

Logistics is the invisible tax

Brazilian feed is produced close to where grain is grown and consumed where animals are raised and processed, and those geographies have been moving apart for a decade as poultry and pig production concentrates in the South while corn and soy expand into the Center-West. The Campinas-Cascavel corn basis of R$14.06 a sack — R$90.83 a tonne of feed — is the price of that separation, measured. No Brazilian body publishes delivered-cost breakdowns by mill, so we treat this as a structural read rather than a modelled figure, but the direction is not in doubt.

Where the value pool sits

LayerWho captures the valueEvidence
Grain and oilseedFarmers, traders, crushers361.7 Mt national harvest; Bunge-Viterra closed July 2025
Mineral and additive inputsGlobal specialty producersdsm-firmenich's 100,000 t/yr Sete Lagoas supplements plant
Formulation and millingMills and integrated producersR$180bn of ingredient purchases for 94 Mt, a 15.25%-21.65% conversion envelope
Animal proteinIntegrators and exportersUSDA: 5.30 Mt of chicken exports in 2026, 33.12% of production

The asymmetry worth noticing: the layers with pricing power are the ones with a patent, a registration or a port. Milling, where all the tonnage is, operates on thin conversion margins precisely because its customers can reformulate.

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Where the capital is going

Three years of disclosed investment in Brazilian feed tell a consistent story: money is going into premix and supplement capacity, into pig and poultry feed in the South and Center-West, and into consolidation of the ingredient layer. Almost none of it is going into new commodity milling capacity — which is exactly what a 15.25% to 21.65% conversion envelope predicts.

Announced and completed projects

InvestorProjectScaleStatus
dsm-firmenichAnimal nutrition plant, Sete Lagoas (MG)100,000 t/yr of beef and dairy supplements; 12,000 m² built on a 40,000 m² siteOpened 17 Oct 2024
ADMNutrient plant, Paraná+40% productionReported Jul 2024
Agroceres MultimixNinth plant, Quatro Pontes (PR)>R$100m; 65,000 m²; >10,000 t/month; phase one poultry and swinePhase one operational
GuabiRefurbishment across all five plantsCapacity and efficiency upgrade90% complete Nov 2024
De HeusToledo (PR) pig-feed modernisationTwo dedicated pelleting lines; premix and medication rooms; external silosCompleted Sep 2025

The two transactions that reset the map

Bunge and Viterra closed on 2 July 2025, two years after announcing a USD 34 billion deal that creates a crop trading and processing group explicitly built to rival ADM and Cargill in linking origination to consumption. For a Brazilian feed mill the practical consequence is fewer independent counterparties for soybean meal and a longer contractual chain between the farm that grew the bean and the mill that buys the meal.

BRF merged into Marfrig, cleared by CADE on 5 September 2025 and renamed MBRF Global Foods Company. This is the most consequential single event in Brazil's feed demand structure in a decade: it concentrates poultry and swine feed buying, plus beef processing, inside one balance sheet. Whether it raises or lowers merchant feed demand depends on how much of the combined company's feed stays captive — and that ratio has not been disclosed.

What the capital is telling us

What to watch

MBRF's post-merger capital plan and whether it discloses a captive-feed ratio; whether De Heus adds a seventh Brazilian plant; whether any global additive producer follows dsm-firmenich into local premix manufacturing; and whether feedlot investment keeps pace with the confinement census, because that is the one capex line that converts directly into beef-cattle feed demand.

The financing constraint nobody discusses

Feed milling in Brazil is financed by the balance sheet of whoever owns it. Merchant mills carry grain inventory through a harvest-to-harvest cycle against a customer base that pays in 30 to 60 days, and the resulting working-capital requirement is a larger barrier to entry than the mill itself. That is the second reason — after the conversion margin — why the tone of Brazilian feed is set by integrated protein companies and by family-controlled independents with land or grain collateral, and not by financial buyers.

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Formulation is the product

In a market where feed is two-thirds of the customer's cost and milling is a 15.25% to 21.65% conversion envelope, technology is not a differentiator appended to the product — it is the only place profit can be made. The competitive frontier in Brazil runs along six lines: removing expensive nutrients from the ration, measuring what is actually in the grain, replacing antimicrobial growth promotion, selling emissions outcomes, industrialising novel proteins, and building biosecurity into plant design.

1. Least-cost formulation, and the additives that carry it

The technique is ordinary; the leverage is not. A nutritionist who cuts a percentage point of soybean meal out of a broiler ration by adding crystalline amino acids and phytase saves the integrator more than any purchasing negotiation could. It is why amino acid and enzyme volumes in Brazil grow faster than the tonnage they sit inside, and why the value CAGR of 4.09% sits 1.59 points above the 2.50% volume CAGR — the entire justification for that gap is this mechanism.

The arithmetic is stark at today's prices. Soybean meal at R$2,038 a tonne in Cascavel (Deral, 22 October 2026) against corn at R$50.24 a sack is a meal-to-corn ratio that rewards every kilogram of meal removed. And phytase releases phosphorus bound in plant phytate, cutting the inorganic phosphate a ration needs — the mechanism whose price consequences are set by sulfur, phosphate rock and Chinese export policy, sized in Global Feed Phosphates.

2. Ingredient variability, and why local formulation data is worth more here

Brazilian second-crop corn and Argentine corn differ materially in density, moisture and mycotoxin load from the US corn on which most commercial formulation models were calibrated. CONAB's 2025/26 survey reports a first corn crop with a record 7,191 kg/hectare yield against a second crop of 112.1 million tonnes — two very different feedstocks inside one national supply. Near-infrared analysis of incoming grain and rapid mycotoxin testing are therefore worth more in Brazil than in a mature market, and a mill's own formulation database is a genuine asset rather than a cost centre.

The same variability runs through the protein side. A weak or strong crush margin — pulled by biodiesel and renewable diesel demand on the oil leg against feed demand on the meal leg — changes meal availability and price independently of what the feed market wants. A formula that cannot flex is a formula that loses money in half of all years.

3. Gut health and the antimicrobial transition

Probiotics, organic acids, essential oils, prebiotics and zinc alternatives are the fastest-moving additive classes in Brazil, and the driver is exports rather than consumer sentiment. A producer selling into the EU or into stricter Asian markets faces specifications on antimicrobial use that its domestic customers do not, so gut-health adoption tracks export exposure almost exactly. This is also where the technical moat is deepest: these products only work inside a formulation and management system, which favours suppliers who employ field nutritionists.

4. Methane as a saleable outcome

Feed is becoming an emissions product. dsm-firmenich's Bovaer — approved by food-safety authorities in the EU, the UK and Japan and commercially available in more than 70 countries — reduces enteric methane by about 30% in dairy cows and up to 45% in beef cattle. The Brazilian evidence is local: at the DSM Beef Center GF in Rio Brilhante (Mato Grosso do Sul), trials reported a 38.2% reduction over 86 days across 30 Nellore animals and a 40% average reduction over 100 days across 20 cows.

For a country with the world's largest commercial cattle herd and a beef export trade under pressure to document low-carbon supply, an additive that produces a third-party-verifiable abatement number is a commercial instrument, not a cost. It also opens a new revenue logic: feed sold with a certified emissions outcome can be priced partly on the carbon market rather than only on weight gain — which is the most plausible route by which additive content per tonne rises fast enough to justify the value premium in our forecast.

5. Novel proteins, industrialised

Insect protein and black soldier fly meal are Brazil's most credible partial substitutes for fishmeal and soybean meal in aquaculture and pet food, and the country's combination of organic waste volume and aquaculture growth makes it a natural production base. Our Global Black Soldier Fly and Global Insect Protein reports size the global opportunity; in Brazil the near-term use case is tilapia and shrimp feed, where fishmeal price volatility is the binding constraint and where the 2.00 Mt aquaculture segment is small enough for a new ingredient to matter.

6. Biosecurity and traceability as process technology

The post-2023 investment cycle has been as much about contamination control as about capacity. Agroceres Multimix's Quatro Pontes plant uses drag conveyors with self-cleaning mechanisms and lot-level traceability from raw material to delivery. De Heus's Toledo line was authorised under Decreto 12.031/2024 and Portaria SDA 798/2023 specifically because it handles medicated premixes, and it runs ractopamine-free for the same reason. In a country whose commercial flocks are free of highly pathogenic avian influenza — and whose access to export markets depends on staying that way — process technology is risk management priced as capex.

The data layer rides on top. dsm-firmenich's FarmTell platform, with more than 15,000 users across 6,000 farms monitoring over 5 million animals, is the clearest Brazilian evidence that feed companies now sell software alongside supplements: a supplier that can show a farm its own performance data defends a price that a commodity premix cannot.

The test for the next seven years

Does additive and service intensity per tonne rise faster than tonnage? If it does, our 4.09% value CAGR is conservative and the 1.59-point gap to volume growth is too narrow. If it does not — if cheap grain lets formulators compete on price alone — Brazil converges on volume growth of 2.50% and value growth barely above it, and the 2033 figure lands nearer USD 53 billion than USD 58 billion. Every disclosed investment in the next chapter is a bet on the first outcome.

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Five risks, ordered by how fast they can move a tonne

Brazilian feed demand is unusually exposed to decisions made outside Brazil. The risks below are ranked by transmission speed rather than by likelihood, because a feed market that grows 3% a year can be moved by double digits in a single quarter by things that have nothing to do with nutrition.

1. Trade policy — the fastest channel

China applies a safeguard to beef imports with an annual quota of roughly 1.1 million tonnes and additional tariffs on volumes above it. This is a feed-demand instrument before it is a beef-trade instrument: it changes where an animal is finished, and therefore whether it eats grass or a ration. It lands directly on the segment growing fastest — beef-cattle feed, up 7.5% in 2025 to 7.76 Mt — and on the confinement decision that produced that growth.

The 2025 precedent is instructive. The 50% US tariff imposed on Brazilian goods that year led the beef packers' association Abiec, representing companies including JBS and Marfrig, to estimate losses of USD 1 billion on the trade. The reallocation was visible in the data: by August 2025 Mexico had overtaken the United States as Brazil's second-largest beef export destination. Every tonne redirected changes where an animal is finished and where its feed is milled. A tariff is a feed-demand shock wearing a trade costume.

2. Animal disease — the binary risk

Brazil's commercial flocks are currently free of highly pathogenic avian influenza (USDA/FAS, September 2026), and that status is worth more to the feed market than any domestic demand forecast. It has been tested: a single outbreak in a commercial flock at Montenegro (Rio Grande do Sul) was notified on 16 May 2025, the sanitary void began on 22 May, the flock was destroyed, and on 18 June 2025 the Ministry of Agriculture notified the World Organisation for Animal Health of the end of the void and self-declared the country free — after which it began notifying the countries that had restricted purchases.

Weeks of disruption from one farm is the whole story. With broiler feed at 39.10 Mt and 33.12% of chicken production destined for export, a multi-state outbreak would remove demand from the largest single block of the market faster than any price signal could. Newcastle disease generates repeated rounds of export restrictions, with MAPA issuing updated restriction lists as recently as October 2026.

3. Grain price reversal and weather

Today's volumes are being bought with a record harvest: 361.7 million tonnes of grain, 144 million tonnes of corn, 180.4 million tonnes of soy, and corn at R$64.30 a sack in Campinas. This is the favourable tail of the distribution, not the middle of it. CONAB's September 2026 survey flags the persistence of El Niño between September and November, with below-average rainfall expected across much of the North and Northeast and above-average rainfall with a risk of excess water in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina.

The specific risk for 2026–2033 is the reverse of the current condition. A corn price rise of 25% translates, at an implied 387.6 kilograms of corn per tonne of feed, into roughly R$250 a tonne of extra feed cost — against a conversion envelope of 15.25% to 21.65%. The customer cannot absorb that through efficiency, so it cuts stocking density instead. The lag between a grain price rise and a protein price rise is one to two quarters, and it is not in any forecast that extrapolates 2025.

4. Currency

The real is the single most powerful variable in this market and almost nobody models it. Ingredients are 78.35% to 84.75% of finished feed value depending on whether you translate the R$180 billion ingredient bill at R$5.45 or at the 22 October 2026 PTAX of R$5.0383 — a 6.40-percentage-point swing in the conversion envelope produced by a 7.5% currency move. Phosphates, amino acids, vitamins and enzymes are dollar-linked and imported; corn and soy are priced for export parity in reais. A weaker real helps the exporter and hurts the additive buyer; a stronger one does the reverse. Ecuador's experience is the extreme case: its feed complex pays an import premium on every tonne.

5. Concentration, captive feed and the undisclosed ratio

Broilers and swine are 64.12% of the market, and one merger concentrated a large part of that order book inside a single balance sheet. MBRF's post-merger captive-feed ratio has not been disclosed. If the combined company internalises more of its feed, merchant millers lose volume without losing a customer relationship they can see coming — the worst kind of loss. The same logic applies one layer up after Bunge-Viterra.

Two risks we are not weighting heavily, and why

Substitution away from animal protein. Plant-based alternatives have not moved Brazil's per-capita meat consumption, and chicken consumption of 46.7 kg per head and pork of 19.1 kg are still rising. We see substitution as a long-horizon risk with no near-term tonnage effect.

Additive supply crises. Amino acid and vitamin markets have had violent price episodes, but Brazilian mills respond by reformulating rather than by buying less feed. Price risk in additives moves value, not volume — which is precisely why it belongs in the value CAGR and not in the tonnage forecast.

What would falsify this forecast

Two consecutive quarters of declining mill output; a corn price rise above 25% with no matching pass-through into chicken and pork prices; a multi-state HPAI outbreak in commercial flocks; a Chinese safeguard outcome that reverses the cattle cycle and takes confinement back below 9 million head; or a BRL appreciation sharp enough to compress the conversion envelope below 15% for two consecutive seasons.

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One regulator, one register, and a shift to self-control

Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAPA) regulates feed through its animal-inputs department. Any establishment that manufactures, fractions, imports, exports or sells feed, supplements, premixes, co-products, núcleos, pet food or feed additives must be registered with MAPA and appear on its published lists of registered establishments and products, which MAPA updates and republishes; the current product list was updated on 8 September 2026.

The legal architecture was rebuilt between 2022 and 2025, and the direction of travel is deregulation by displacement — the state moving from pre-approval to audit. The load-bearing instruments are:

The technical reference behind product registration is the Compêndio Brasileiro de Alimentação Animal, which lists approved ingredients, their specifications and their permitted use — in practice the document a formulator consults before a nutritionist ever sees a price list.

What self-control means commercially

Self-control favours scale. A company with a validated quality system, lot-level traceability and its own laboratory absorbs the compliance burden; a small mill faces the same obligations with a fraction of the revenue. Expect the regulatory framework itself to drive consolidation in Brazilian milling over the next five years, entirely independently of any merger — which is a stronger force than CADE's case law and receives a fraction of the attention.

The industry's live policy ask: tax relief

Sindirações states its central institutional objective as the implementation of tax relief (desoneração tributária) for the animal-feed industry, on the argument that it allows the private sector to invest more and makes Brazilian product more competitive internationally. This is the policy variable to watch: with a conversion envelope of 15.25% to 21.65%, a change in the federal tax treatment of feed inputs is not a marginal adjustment to profitability — on this cost structure it can be the difference between a viable mill and a marginal one. The industry's representative body is a syndicate with roughly 140 members accounting for about 90% of the national market, which gives it unusual weight in a Brasília negotiation.

The external regulator: EUDR

The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 covers seven commodities — cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soy, wood and rubber — and therefore reaches two Brazilian feed inputs directly: soybean meal and cattle. The European Parliament and Council adopted a revised regulation on 19 December 2025 that added a further period before application and made substantive amendments, giving companies inside and outside the EU another year to prepare, with application now expected from the end of 2026.

For Brazilian feed the operative point is that compliance is documentary and traceable rather than chemical: a mill buying soy from a trader must be able to show the plot, not just the silo. That favours large, vertically integrated supply chains and adds a fixed cost to small exporters — another force pushing the same way as self-control.

Divergent product standards inside one market

Ractopamine is the clearest example of a divergence with capital consequences. It is permitted in some markets and prohibited in others, and a mill serving both cannot switch formulations per truckload, so it builds dedicated ractopamine-free lines — as De Heus did at Toledo. The same logic applies to antimicrobial growth promoters and to maximum residue levels. Brazil's mills are therefore building compliance into plant design rather than into product labelling.

What to watch

Whether the tax-relief agenda advances; how aggressively MAPA audits against Decreto 12.126's self-control obligations; whether EUDR application from end-2026 survives without further delay; and whether MERCOSUR moves toward mutual recognition of feed-additive registrations, which would cut the cost of a regional launch by a factor rather than a percentage.

Sources

" faq_question_1: "Is Brazil's feed market 97 million tonnes or 89.9 million tonnes?" faq_answer_1: "Both, and the difference is a definition rather than a disagreement. Sindirações measures complete rations and mineral supplements together and reports 94 Mt for 2025 and a 97 Mt projection for 2026. Alltech's Agri-Food Outlook counts industrial compound feed only, mill by mill, and puts Brazil at 89.904 Mt. The 4.096 Mt gap — 4.36% of the national total — is the mineral-salt and supplement layer. This report uses the Sindirações measure because it is the series the Brazilian industry itself plans against, and states the narrower figure wherever the two could be confused." faq_question_2: "Why does the value forecast grow faster than the volume forecast?" faq_answer_2: "Because milling alone cannot generate it. Volume grows 2.50% a year to 114.5 Mt in 2033 while value grows 4.09% to USD 58.08 billion, and the 1.59-point gap assumes that a tonne of feed carries more additive, premix and service content in 2033 than in 2025. That is a judgement, not an observation: ingredients are already 78.35% to 84.75% of finished feed value, leaving a conversion envelope of 15.25% to 21.65% out of which industrial cost, freight, energy and profit all come. If additive intensity per tonne does not rise, value converges on volume growth and the 2033 figure lands nearer USD 53 billion." faq_question_3: "Will beef cattle feed keep growing at 7.5% a year?" faq_answer_3: "No. Beef-cattle feed grew 7.5% in 2025 to 7.76 Mt on a 16% jump in confinement from 7.96 to 9.25 million head, and we forecast it to 8.23 Mt in 2026. But dividing one by the other shows the segment feeds 0.839 tonnes of ration per confined head, falling to 0.823 tonnes if 2026 reaches 10 million head at 8.23 Mt. The growth is more animals being housed, not each animal being fed longer — and housing is a decision an operator re-takes every season, exposed directly to China's 1.1 million tonne beef safeguard. We forecast the segment decelerating inside an otherwise compounding market." faq_question_4: "What margin does a Brazilian feed mill actually earn?" faq_answer_4: "A spread, not a margin. Sindirações reports R$180 billion of ingredient turnover for 94 Mt of output, or R$1,914.89 per tonne of finished feed. At the 22 October 2026 PTAX of R$5.0383 that is USD 380.07 against a benchmark finished-feed price of USD 448.45 — so ingredients are 84.75% of revenue and 15.25% is left for industrial cost, energy, freight, working capital and profit. At the R$5.45 rate used in our regional report the ingredient share is 78.35% and 21.65% is left. A 7.5% currency move therefore swings the entire conversion envelope by 6.40 percentage points, which is why this business is decided by buying grain well and financing inventory cheaply rather than by formulation." global_schema: organization: "@id": MIWS-root#organization "@type": Organization url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/" name: Pheonix Research website: "@id": MIWS-root "@type": WebSite url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/" name: Pheonix Research api: "@id": MIWS-root#api "@type": WebAPI url: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/" graph: node_id: MIMR-node_e66d809 graph_node_endpoint: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/query/live/node/MIMR-node_e66d809" graph_snapshot: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/read/live/graph" graph_exclusions: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/read/live/exclusions" graph_meta: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/read/live/meta" graph_bundle: "https://graph.pheonixresearch.com/api/v1/read/live/bundle" discovery: discovery_json: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/.well-known/pheonix-discovery.json" llms_txt: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/llms.txt" sitemap: "https://www.pheonixresearch.com/sitemap.xml" --- # Brazil Animal Feed Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033 - **Market Size (Base Year):** USD 42.15 - **Forecast Value:** USD 58.08 - **CAGR:** 4.09% - **Forecast Period:** 2026 - 2033 - **Coverage:** Country - Brazil ## Executive Summary Brazil's feed industry reaches 97 million tonnes in 2026, up 3.19% on 94 million in 2025 and 6.59% on 91 million in 2024, and 114.5 million tonnes by 2033. On the global revenue-per-tonne benchmark of USD 448.45 the market is worth USD 42.15 billion in 2025 and USD 58.08 billion in 2033 — a 4.09% value CAGR on 2.50% volume growth. The composition is narrower than the growth rate suggests. Broiler feed is 40.31% of the market and delivers 41.67% of the 2026 increment; broilers and swine together are 64.12%. The only shrinking block is the residual of mineral salts, equine and minor species, which falls from 5.20 to 4.86 to 4.79 million tonnes across 2024-2026 and from 5.71% to 4.94% of the pile. One constraint binds and three variables decide conversion. Feed is 62.51% of a Parana broiler producer's cost and 72.52% of a Santa Catarina pig producer's (Embrapa CIAS, July 2026), which leaves the milling industry a conversion envelope of 15.25% to 21.65% of revenue — and a 7.5% currency move swings that envelope by 6.40 points. Geography matters as much: a Campinas mill pays R$14.06 more per sack of corn than a Cascavel mill, worth R$90.83 per tonne of feed. The variables are China's 1.1 million tonne beef safeguard, an export share of chicken production rising from 32.17% to 33.74%, and whether confinement reaches 10 million head at a falling 0.823 tonnes of feed per head. ## Market Report ## The market in one paragraph Brazil's feed industry will put **97 million tonnes** of rations and mineral supplements into the country's animals in 2026 — 3.19% more than the 94 million tonnes of 2025 and 6.59% more than the 91 million of 2024, according to Sindirações, the national feed-industry syndicate. On the global revenue-per-tonne benchmark of USD 448.45 that tonnage is worth **USD 42.15 billion** in 2025 and **USD 58.08 billion** in 2033, when volume reaches 114.5 million tonnes: a 4.09% value CAGR on 2.50% volume growth. Three numbers explain the market better than the headline does. Broiler feed is **40.31%** of the pile and delivers **41.67%** of the 2026 increment. Feed is **62.51%** of a Paraná broiler producer's total cost and **72.52%** of a Santa Catarina pig producer's (Embrapa CIAS, July 2026). And a mill in Campinas pays **R$14.06** more per 60-kilogram sack of corn than a mill in Cascavel — **R$90.83 per tonne of feed**, or 4.74% of its ingredient bill, before a nutritionist has formulated anything. - Volume: 94.0 Mt (2025) → 114.5 Mt (2033), 2.50% CAGR - Value: USD 42.15 bn (2025) → USD 58.08 bn (2033), 4.09% CAGR - Composition (2026): broiler 40.31%, swine 23.81%, beef cattle 8.48%, dairy 8.14%, layers 7.97%, pet 4.28%, aquaculture 2.06%, other 4.94% - Fastest species: beef cattle, +7.5% in 2025 — driven by housing, not by herd numbers - Slowest: the residual of mineral salts, equine and minor species, which fell 5.20 → 4.86 → 4.79 Mt across 2024–2026 while everything else grew ## What this report counts, and the 4.1 million tonnes that separate two credible sources Brazilian feed statistics are quoted at two different sizes, and the gap between them is wide enough to change a growth rate. This report is built on the wider national measure — Sindirações' *rações e suplementos* — and states where the narrower international measure differs. | Measure | | 2025 volume | | What it includes | | Sindirações, Brazil (the base of this report) | | 94 Mt | | Complete rations *and* mineral supplements, across broilers, layers, swine, beef cattle, dairy cattle, pet food, aquaculture and minor lines. | | Alltech, 2026 Agri-Food Outlook — Brazil | | 89.904 Mt | | Industrial compound feed only, counted mill by mill across 38,837 mills in 142 countries. | | Gap | | 4.096 Mt | | 4.36% of the national total. It is the mineral-salt and supplement layer, not a disagreement about feed. | **The valuation is ours, and it is derived, not surveyed.** No institution publishes a dollar value for Brazilian compound feed. We take the revenue per tonne implied by the global market — USD 645.80 billion of 2025 value against 1,440.077 million tonnes of 2025 volume, or **USD 448.45 per tonne** — and apply it to Brazil's tonnage. That gives USD 42.15 billion for 2025. **The check is bottom-up and independent.** Sindirações reports that Brazilian mills moved **R$180 billion** of macro and micro ingredients in 2025, excluding packaging, industrial cost and margin. Divided by 94 million tonnes that is **R$1,914.89 of ingredient cost per tonne of finished feed**. At the 22 October 2026 PTAX rate of R$5.0383 that is USD 380.07, or **84.75%** of the USD 448.45 benchmark price. At the R$5.45 rate used in our regional report it is USD 351.36, or **78.35%**. Both are credible ingredient shares for a milling business, and the point of showing both is that the currency moves the answer by **6.40 percentage points** — which is the entire margin. Nothing in this market is as sensitive to anything as it is to the real. **Deliberately excluded:** feed grains traded as commodities rather than as formulated feed; on-farm mixing, which no Brazilian source measures; and the value of toll-milling services, which are counted inside the customer's cost rather than as a feed sale. ## Market forecast snapshot We model the market forward from the 2026 estimate of 97 million tonnes rather than from the 2025 actual, because 2026 is the first year in which the post-2022 cost recovery is fully in the base. All three cases hold the price-and-mix path constant at 1.55% a year and vary only tonnage, so the spread below is a volume story and not a price story. | Case | | 2026 (Mt) | | 2033 (Mt) | | Volume CAGR | | 2033 value | | What has to be true | | Conservative | | 97.0 | | 109.9 | | 1.80% | | USD 53.72 bn | | Chinese beef safeguard bites, confinement plateaus near 10 million head, broiler export growth halves. | | **Base** | | **97.0** | | **114.5** | | **2.40%** | | **USD 58.08 bn** | | Poultry exports keep compounding at USDA's pace, swine recovers, dairy and aquaculture add volume steadily. | | Optimistic | | 97.0 | | 119.3 | | 3.00% | | USD 60.50 bn | | New poultry market access in Asia, confinement clears 11 million head, additive intensity accelerates. | Across 2025–2033 the base case is 2.50% volume and 4.09% value. The 1.59-point gap between them is the central judgement of this report: it assumes that a tonne of Brazilian feed in 2033 carries meaningfully more additive, premix and service content than a tonne did in 2025, because the milling margin on its own is too thin to produce value growth. ## Where the three million tonnes actually come from A 3.19% growth rate reads like a broad expansion. It is not. Of the 3.0 million tonnes added between 2025 and 2026, **1.25 million comes from broiler feed alone** — 41.67% of the increment from a species that is 40.31% of the base. Swine adds 0.60 Mt, beef cattle 0.47, layers 0.30, dairy 0.24, pet food 0.11 and aquaculture 0.10. | Segment | | 2024 (Mt) | | 2025 (Mt) | | 2026e (Mt) | | 2025 growth | | 2026 increment (Mt) | | 2026 share | | Broiler | | 36.90 | | 37.85 | | 39.10 | | +2.5% | | +1.25 | | 40.31% | | Swine | | 21.60 | | 22.50 | | 23.10 | | +4.2% | | +0.60 | | 23.81% | | Beef cattle | | 7.22 | | 7.76 | | 8.23 | | +7.5% | | +0.47 | | 8.48% | | Dairy cattle | | 7.10 | | 7.66 | | 7.90 | | +7.9% | | +0.24 | | 8.14% | | Layers | | 7.18 | | 7.43 | | 7.73 | | +3.5% | | +0.30 | | 7.97% | | Pet food | | 4.01 | | 4.04 | | 4.15 | | +0.7% | | +0.11 | | 4.28% | | Aquaculture | | 1.79 | | 1.90 | | 2.00 | | +5.3% | | +0.10 | | 2.06% | | **Seven segments** | | **85.80** | | **89.14** | | **92.21** | | — | | **+3.07** | | 95.06% | | Residual (mineral salts, equine, minor species) | | 5.20 | | 4.86 | | 4.79 | | −6.5% | | −0.07 | | 4.94% | | **Total** | | **91.00** | | **94.00** | | **97.00** | | **+3.30%** | | **+3.00** | | 100% | **The residual is the only part of this market that is shrinking.** It falls from 5.20 Mt to 4.86 Mt to 4.79 Mt across the three years, and its share of the pile drops from 5.71% to 5.17% to 4.94%. That is a small number with a real meaning: the growth in Brazilian feed is not a broad rise in animal agriculture, it is a narrow rise in the five species that are industrially reared for meat, milk and eggs. Anyone modelling this market from a herd count will overstate it; anyone modelling it from a poultry and swine slaughter series will get closer. ## Dairy added more tonnes than beef did The feedlot story is the one everyone tells about Brazil, and the rate is genuinely spectacular: beef-cattle feed up 7.5% in 2025 on a 16% jump in confinement, from 7.96 million head to 9.25 million, with the Cepea/Esalq confinement census pointing at close to 10 million in 2026. But in absolute tonnes the dairy herd outcontributed it. Beef-cattle feed added **0.54 Mt** in 2025; dairy-cattle feed added **0.56 Mt**, growing 7.9% on formal milk procurement up 8% (IBGE). Dairy is a segment almost nobody forecasts and it is nearly the same size as beef feed — 7.66 Mt against 7.76 Mt in 2025. The two behave completely differently, which is why treating "cattle feed" as one category is a mistake that costs accuracy. Beef feed is a housing decision and it can reverse in a single season. Dairy feed is a stocking-rate and yield decision, and it reverses slowly because a dairy farmer who has invested in a herd and a milking parlour does not respond to a price signal by selling cows. Over a forecast horizon, the slower-growing dairy segment is the more reliable of the two. ## The 62.5%, the 72.5%, and the 15.25% left for everyone else Embrapa's CIAS cost indices give the cleanest view of what feed is worth to its buyer. In July 2026 a Paraná broiler producer's cost was **R$4.77 per kilogram of live weight**, of which feed was **62.51%** and one-day chicks 19.83%. A Santa Catarina pig producer's cost was **R$6.29 per kilogram**, of which feed was **72.52%**. Fold that into the ingredient arithmetic and a hard structural fact appears. If ingredients are 78.35% to 84.75% of the finished feed price, the entire feed-milling industry — 94 million tonnes and USD 42.15 billion — competes for a **conversion envelope of 15.25% to 21.65% of revenue**, out of which come industrial cost, energy, freight, working capital and profit. This is not a business with pricing power. It is a business with a spread. Three consequences follow, and they shape every commercial decision in the market. - The mill can pass through cost but not margin. When feed is 62–73% of the customer's cost, the customer's first response to a price rise is to reformulate, not to pay. That is why the industry's profit moved into formulation, additives and financing rather than into the tonne. - Least-cost formulation is the product. A nutritionist who removes a percentage point of soybean meal from a broiler ration with crystalline amino acids and phytase is worth more to an integrator than a point of market share — the mechanism we size in Global Feed Phosphates. - Cheap grain is a demand subsidy that expires. Today's volumes are being bought with a record harvest. When corn and meal revert toward their means, the feed-cost line rises before the protein price does, and the customer cuts stocking density rather than feed quality. That lag of one to two quarters is the market's main cyclical risk. ## The R$90.83 basis: why this is a logistics business On 22 October 2026, corn in Campinas (SP) was quoted at **R$64.30** per 60-kilogram sack and corn in Cascavel (PR) at **R$50.24** (Cepea and Deral, compiled by FeedConecta). The R$14.06 spread is a 21.87% premium for standing in the wrong place. The industry's own sensitivity gives that spread a cash value: each R$1.00 on the sack of corn moves the cost of a tonne of feed by **R$6.46**. That implies corn at **387.6 kilograms per tonne of feed, or 38.76% inclusion** — a plausible blend across a national basket that includes pet food, mineral salt and aquaculture diets alongside poultry rations that run far higher. Applying it to the basis, the Campinas mill pays **R$90.83 more per tonne of feed** than the Cascavel mill, or **4.74% of the R$1,914.89 ingredient bill**. Against a 15.25% conversion envelope, that single geographic difference consumes a third of the industry's gross margin. This is the least-discussed and most decisive fact in Brazilian feed. Feed is not made where it is eaten, and in Brazil those two geographies have been separating for a decade as poultry and pig production concentrates in the South while corn and soy expand into the Center-West. Freight, storage and the ability to buy at harvest are where the least efficient mills lose the most money — and where the integrated producer with its own silos wins without trying. ## The growth rate is set in importing markets USDA's Brasília post forecasts Brazilian chicken meat production at **16.00 million tonnes in 2026 and 16.30 million in 2027**, from 15.45 million in 2025. Exports rise faster than output: 4.97 Mt in 2025, 5.30 Mt in 2026, 5.50 Mt in 2027 — lifting the export share of production from **32.17% to 33.12% to 33.74%**. Domestic consumption grows only **2.10%** in 2026, to 10.705 million tonnes. The consequence for feed demand is direct and slightly uncomfortable: the largest single block of Brazilian feed demand is levered to *other countries'* appetite and to phytosanitary access, not to Brazilian consumers. Brazil is the world's largest chicken exporter and the third-largest producer, and its commercial flocks are currently free of highly pathogenic avian influenza — a status that is worth more to the feed market than any domestic demand forecast. The mirror image is beef. China applies a safeguard with an annual quota of roughly **1.1 million tonnes** and additional tariffs on volumes above it. A safeguard is a feed-demand instrument: it changes where an animal is finished, and therefore whether it eats grass or a ration. ## Nine and a quarter million head, and how reversible that is Confined cattle rose from 7.96 million head in 2024 to 9.25 million in 2025, and the Cepea census suggests close to 10 million in 2026. Beef-cattle feed rose with them, from 7.22 Mt to 7.76 Mt to 8.23 Mt. Divide one by the other and the segment's engine becomes visible. In 2025 Brazil fed **0.839 tonnes of ration per confined head**. If 2026 delivers 10 million head and 8.23 Mt, the figure falls to **0.823 tonnes**. The segment is growing because more animals are being housed, not because each animal is being fed longer or harder. That matters for two reasons. - It is a volume switch, not a productivity trend. A feedlot decision is made each season by an operator comparing the cost of gain against the cattle price. When the cattle cycle turns and animals get cheaper, confining them gets less attractive, and 1.5 million head of extra demand can disappear in one dry season. - It is the most trade-exposed tonne in the market. Feedlot cattle exist to be finished fast for export and for premium domestic cuts. China's 1.1 million tonne quota sits directly upstream of that decision. We therefore forecast the segment forward at a decelerating rate inside a market that is otherwise compounding, and we treat the confinement census — not the cattle herd — as the number to watch. ## What the data will not support - There is no published value for this market. Every dollar figure in this report is our derivation from a global revenue-per-tonne benchmark, cross-checked against the national ingredient bill. Treat USD 42.15 billion as a central estimate within a band of roughly USD 39–45 billion, and the 2033 figure with correspondingly more tolerance. - No mill-level shares exist. Sindirações' roughly 140 members account for about 90% of the national market, but no company discloses Brazilian feed volume. Our competitive chapter describes business models and disclosed capital, not shares, and we have not constructed a share table from inference. - The seven species lines do not sum to the headline. They sum to 92.21 Mt against a 97 Mt total. The 4.79 Mt residual contains mineral salts plus equine, caprine, ovine, rabbit and other minor tonnage, and no published source splits it. We show it as a residual rather than invent a breakdown. - Slaughter rates differ between the trade body's own publications. Sindirações' March 2026 magazine carries poultry slaughter growth of 2.9%, swine 3.8% and cattle 8.3%; its 30 March press release carries 3.1%, 4.3% and 8.2%. We use the later, more widely reported set. The direction of every argument here is unaffected; a quarter-point does not move a forecast. - Volume is a trade-body estimate, not a census. The 2026 figure of 97 Mt is a projection, not a measurement, and it will be revised. ## Related analysis on this market Brazil is 45.99% of Latin American feed tonnage and 43.98% of it on the narrower compound-feed definition. Three Pheonix reports carry the rest of the picture. - Latin America Animal Feed Market Size, Share & Forecast 2026–2033 — the regional market at 204.4 Mt and USD 91.7 billion, with the country, species and valuation architecture this report sits inside. - Global Animal Feed Market — the 1.44 billion tonne world market that supplies the revenue-per-tonne benchmark used here. - Global Feed Phosphates (DCP, MCP, MDCP, DFP) — the mineral input whose price is set by sulfur, phosphate rock and Chinese export policy rather than by feed demand. - Colombia Soybean Grain Market — the other end of the South American oilseed chain that supplies Brazil's protein. - Global Black Soldier Fly and Global Insect Protein — the novel-protein layer that matters first in aquaculture and pet food. - Global Dairy Market — the end market behind the dairy-feed segment that added more tonnes in 2025 than the feedlot boom did. ## Table of Contents The market in one paragraph What this report counts, and the 4.1 million tonnes that separate two credible sources Market forecast snapshot Where the three million tonnes actually come from Dairy added more tonnes than beef did The 62.5%, the 72.5%, and the 15.25% left for everyone else The R$90.83 basis: why this is a logistics business The growth rate is set in importing markets Nine and a quarter million head, and how reversible that is What the data will not support ## Competitive Landscape Who owns the tonne Brazil’s feed industry is often described as consolidating. It is consolidating at the ingredient and protein layers, and it remains stubbornly fragmented at the mill. Those are different industries with different economics, and reading one as the other is the commonest mistake made about this market. No company publishes Brazilian feed volume, so we do not publish shares. What can be described with evidence is the structure: who owns feed capacity, what they do with it, and where disclosed capital has gone. Tier one: integrated protein companies with captive mills The largest feed producers in Brazil are not feed companies. They are chicken, pork and beef processors who mill for their own animals and sell the surplus into the merchant market. The 2025 consolidation made this tier larger: on 5 September 2025 CADE cleared the merger of BRF into Marfrig without restrictions, creating MBRF Global Foods Company S.A., which combines Marfrig’s beef and processed-protein business with BRF’s poultry, swine and processed-food operations. CADE’s reasoning is worth noting for what it says about structure: horizontal overlaps were below 20% and each vertical-stage share below 30% — thresholds that would have been impossible to meet in a genuinely concentrated milling market. JBS, the world’s largest beef producer, and Minerva operate their own feed and supplement capacity for the same reason. When feed is 62.5% to 72.5% of your cost, owning the mill is a margin strategy, not a supply strategy. A captive mill is also a procurement weapon: an integrator that can buy corn at harvest, store it and price its own feed below the merchant market for as long as its balance sheet allows. The number that matters here is not a share, it is a decision. MBRF now concentrates a very large poultry and swine feed order book inside one balance sheet. Whether merchant feed demand rises or falls depends entirely on how much of that combined company’s feed stays captive — and management has not disclosed it. For an independent miller in Paraná, that single undisclosed ratio is a larger competitive variable than any rival’s capacity. Tier two: international agri-feed groups De Heus is the clearest case of a European feed group building a Brazilian position rather than buying one. It runs six plants — two in Rio Claro (SP), plus Apucarana (PR), Toledo (PR), Guararapes (SP) and Itaberaí (GO) — with an administrative office in Campinas, an experimental pig-nutrition centre and a distribution centre in Bezerros (PE). Its Toledo unit was rebuilt through 2025 with new exhaustion systems, enlarged premix and medication weighing rooms, external silos and two dedicated pelleting lines, and is deliberately ractopamine-free because several export markets prohibit the additive. That last detail is the strategy in miniature: a mill built around the strictest customer’s specification so that it can serve every customer. Cargill, Bunge and ADM compete a layer up, in origination and processing, and selectively in feed and premix. ADM’s Paraná nutrient facility lifting production by 40% is the pattern: the internationals invest where an ingredient position converts into a formulated product, not in commodity milling. Tier three: national independents with real capacity Brazil’s independents are larger than outsiders assume. Agroceres Multimix opened its ninth plant at Quatro Pontes (PR) with more than R$100 million invested, 65,000 square metres of built area and capacity above 10,000 tonnes a month; phase one makes poultry and swine feed and concentrates, with ruminant nutrition, núcleos and premixes to follow. Guabi, fifty years old in 2024, runs five plants — Sales Oliveira (SP), Além Paraíba (MG), Pará de Minas (MG), Anápolis (GO) and Rondonópolis (MT) — and completed a refurbishment programme across all five. Sindirações’ roughly 140 member companies account for about 90% of the Brazilian market, which tells you two things at once: the association is genuinely representative, and no single member dominates it. The additive and premix layer This is the most concentrated part of the chain and the one where dependency has been falling. dsm-firmenich leads the Brazilian cattle-supplement market through its Tortuga brand and has localised production: a plant at Sete Lagoas (MG), opened 17 October 2024, with 100,000 tonnes a year of beef and dairy supplement capacity, 40,000 square metres of site and 12,000 square metres built. Its FarmTell platform — more than 15,000 users across 6,000 farms monitoring over 5 million animals — is the clearest evidence that feed selling in Brazil is becoming a data business. Beyond dsm-firmenich, the amino acid, vitamin and enzyme layer is supplied by a small group of European and Chinese producers through distributors, which is why additive availability here is a function of global plant economics rather than of Brazilian demand. What the structure means for competition The milling layer competes on cost of capital and logistics, not on product. Rations are similar; delivered grain cost is not — and the Campinas-to-Cascavel corn basis of R$90.83 a tonne is the clearest proof. The additive layer competes on registration and formulation data. A molecule approved by MAPA is not automatically saleable into a customer’s export specification, and a premix matrix validated on Brazilian second-crop corn is not transferable to Argentine corn. Integration is the sector’s answer to thin margins. Both 2025 transactions — Bunge-Viterra and BRF into Marfrig — moved a company closer to owning an input or an outlet, not closer to owning a mill. A new entrant should expect to buy distribution rather than build it. The independent millers are family-controlled, capacity-rich and valuation-conscious; the additive distributors control the technical relationship with the nutritionist, which is the relationship that actually decides a ration. - **Structure:** fragmented - **Tier 1 Players:** 10 - **Intensity:** high ## Value Chain From a 361.7 million tonne harvest to a feeder Brazilian feed has one structural advantage over every competitor in the world: the grain is grown in the same country, often in the same state. CONAB’s twelfth grain survey for 2025/26 puts the national harvest at 361.7 million tonnes, up 2.6%, on 83.5 million hectares. Within it, soy reaches a record 180.4 million tonnes (+5.2%) with exports of 116.2 million tonnes, corn reaches 144 million tonnes (+2.0%) of which 112.1 million is the second crop, and sorghum jumps 20.4% to 7.35 million tonnes on a 32.9% increase in planted area. The chain has a cheap, bulky base and a small, expensive tip. The bulk decides whether a mill is competitive; the tip decides whether it earns anything. Energy: corn, and the safrinha that makes Brazil the low-cost origin Corn is the base of nearly every Brazilian ration, at an implied 38.76% inclusion across the national feed basket — 387.6 kilograms per tonne of finished feed, derived from the industry’s own sensitivity that each R$1.00 on the 60-kilogram sack moves feed cost by R$6.46 a tonne. The safrinha, the second crop that delivers 112.1 of the 144 million tonnes, is the single most important supplier relationship in the market: it arrives close to the mills of the Center-West, it is priced for export parity rather than domestic scarcity, and it disappears entirely in a bad year. Sorghum is the hedge. At R$45.00 a sack in Rio Verde (GO) against corn at R$50.24 in Cascavel (PR) on 22 October 2026, sorghum trades at 89.57% of corn — a 10.43% discount that is roughly, but not exactly, offset by its lower energy density. The 32.9% area increase is best read as farmers buying insurance against a corn price they do not control, not as an arbitrage. For a formulator it is a substitution option worth holding; for a crusher it is a warning. Protein: the crush margin is pulled two ways at once Soybean meal comes from Brazil’s own crush, and the crush margin is being pulled in opposite directions. Food and feed demand sets the meal side; biodiesel and renewable diesel demand sets the oil side. A strong oil pull raises crush volumes and cheapens meal, which is good for feed buyers. A weak one does the reverse. On 22 October 2026 meal was quoted at R$2,038 a tonne in Cascavel (Deral) — unusually low against the oilseed price, which is exactly the condition that makes a nutritionist reach for crystalline amino acids instead. The protein substitution mechanism is the most valuable technique in the value chain and the one we size separately in Global Feed Phosphates: every percentage point of soybean meal removed from a ration by adding lysine, methionine and phytase is a direct transfer of value from the crusher to the additive producer, with the mill capturing only a fraction as fee. Minerals and additives: where the margin sits Dicalcium and monocalcium phosphate supply the phosphorus and calcium that cereal and oilseed rations lack, and the price mechanism behind them is set by sulfur, phosphate rock and Chinese export policy rather than by feed demand. Amino acids are the other half of the substitution story. Both categories are supplied by a small group of global producers selling into a country that until recently imported almost all of its premix — which is why dsm-firmenich’s 100,000 tonnes at Sete Lagoas is the most strategically interesting plant built in Brazil this cycle. Origination and trade The ingredient layer consolidated sharply in 2025. Bunge closed its USD 34 billion merger with Viterra on 2 July 2025, creating a crop trading and processing group explicitly positioned to rival ADM and Cargill in connecting origination to consumption — and Brazil is one of the origination markets that mattered most in the deal’s logic. For a feed mill, the practical consequence is fewer independent counterparties for meal and a longer contractual chain between the farm that grew the bean and the mill that buys it. Logistics is the invisible tax Brazilian feed is produced close to where grain is grown and consumed where animals are raised and processed, and those geographies have been moving apart for a decade as poultry and pig production concentrates in the South while corn and soy expand into the Center-West. The Campinas-Cascavel corn basis of R$14.06 a sack — R$90.83 a tonne of feed — is the price of that separation, measured. No Brazilian body publishes delivered-cost breakdowns by mill, so we treat this as a structural read rather than a modelled figure, but the direction is not in doubt. Where the value pool sits Layer Who captures the value Evidence Grain and oilseed Farmers, traders, crushers 361.7 Mt national harvest; Bunge-Viterra closed July 2025 Mineral and additive inputs Global specialty producers dsm-firmenich’s 100,000 t/yr Sete Lagoas supplements plant Formulation and milling Mills and integrated producers R$180bn of ingredient purchases for 94 Mt, a 15.25%-21.65% conversion envelope Animal protein Integrators and exporters USDA: 5.30 Mt of chicken exports in 2026, 33.12% of production The asymmetry worth noticing: the layers with pricing power are the ones with a patent, a registration or a port. Milling, where all the tonnage is, operates on thin conversion margins precisely because its customers can reformulate. - **Supply Complexity:** Medium ## Investment Activity Where the capital is going Three years of disclosed investment in Brazilian feed tell a consistent story: money is going into premix and supplement capacity, into pig and poultry feed in the South and Center-West, and into consolidation of the ingredient layer. Almost none of it is going into new commodity milling capacity — which is exactly what a 15.25% to 21.65% conversion envelope predicts. Announced and completed projects Investor Project Scale Status dsm-firmenich Animal nutrition plant, Sete Lagoas (MG) 100,000 t/yr of beef and dairy supplements; 12,000 m² built on a 40,000 m² site Opened 17 Oct 2024 ADM Nutrient plant, Paraná +40% production Reported Jul 2024 Agroceres Multimix Ninth plant, Quatro Pontes (PR) >R$100m; 65,000 m²; >10,000 t/month; phase one poultry and swine Phase one operational Guabi Refurbishment across all five plants Capacity and efficiency upgrade 90% complete Nov 2024 De Heus Toledo (PR) pig-feed modernisation Two dedicated pelleting lines; premix and medication rooms; external silos Completed Sep 2025 The two transactions that reset the map Bunge and Viterra closed on 2 July 2025, two years after announcing a USD 34 billion deal that creates a crop trading and processing group explicitly built to rival ADM and Cargill in linking origination to consumption. For a Brazilian feed mill the practical consequence is fewer independent counterparties for soybean meal and a longer contractual chain between the farm that grew the bean and the mill that buys the meal. BRF merged into Marfrig, cleared by CADE on 5 September 2025 and renamed MBRF Global Foods Company. This is the most consequential single event in Brazil’s feed demand structure in a decade: it concentrates poultry and swine feed buying, plus beef processing, inside one balance sheet. Whether it raises or lowers merchant feed demand depends on how much of the combined company’s feed stays captive — and that ratio has not been disclosed. What the capital is telling us Localising additives beats importing them. dsm-firmenich’s 100,000 tonnes at Sete Lagoas only makes sense if premix and supplement demand grows faster than the feed pile itself — a direct bet on additive intensity per tonne, and the same bet embedded in our value CAGR. Capacity follows the second-crop corn, not the animal. Quatro Pontes (PR), Toledo (PR), Guararapes (SP), Itaberaí (GO) — every disclosed plant sits inside the corridor where the safrinha lands and where poultry and pig production is densest. That is the R$90.83 corn-basis argument being made with capital. Headroom is small, so growth must be taken from someone. A plant of 10,000 tonnes a month is 120,000 tonnes a year — 0.13% of national output. No single disclosed project can move the national number; they are local share fights. Brazil needs to add 17.5 million tonnes between 2026 and 2033, or 18.06% on today’s volume, and the disclosed pipeline does not attempt it. The investable growth is one layer up. The most profitable place to own capacity in this market is the additive and premix layer, where a registration and a formulation database protect a price, rather than the milling layer, where the customer can reformulate and the competitor can undercut. What to watch MBRF’s post-merger capital plan and whether it discloses a captive-feed ratio; whether De Heus adds a seventh Brazilian plant; whether any global additive producer follows dsm-firmenich into local premix manufacturing; and whether feedlot investment keeps pace with the confinement census, because that is the one capex line that converts directly into beef-cattle feed demand. The financing constraint nobody discusses Feed milling in Brazil is financed by the balance sheet of whoever owns it. Merchant mills carry grain inventory through a harvest-to-harvest cycle against a customer base that pays in 30 to 60 days, and the resulting working-capital requirement is a larger barrier to entry than the mill itself. That is the second reason — after the conversion margin — why the tone of Brazilian feed is set by integrated protein companies and by family-controlled independents with land or grain collateral, and not by financial buyers. - **Trend:** rising - **Capital Intensity:** high - **Recent M&A:** yes ## Technology & Innovation Formulation is the product In a market where feed is two-thirds of the customer’s cost and milling is a 15.25% to 21.65% conversion envelope, technology is not a differentiator appended to the product — it is the only place profit can be made. The competitive frontier in Brazil runs along six lines: removing expensive nutrients from the ration, measuring what is actually in the grain, replacing antimicrobial growth promotion, selling emissions outcomes, industrialising novel proteins, and building biosecurity into plant design. 1. Least-cost formulation, and the additives that carry it The technique is ordinary; the leverage is not. A nutritionist who cuts a percentage point of soybean meal out of a broiler ration by adding crystalline amino acids and phytase saves the integrator more than any purchasing negotiation could. It is why amino acid and enzyme volumes in Brazil grow faster than the tonnage they sit inside, and why the value CAGR of 4.09% sits 1.59 points above the 2.50% volume CAGR — the entire justification for that gap is this mechanism. The arithmetic is stark at today’s prices. Soybean meal at R$2,038 a tonne in Cascavel (Deral, 22 October 2026) against corn at R$50.24 a sack is a meal-to-corn ratio that rewards every kilogram of meal removed. And phytase releases phosphorus bound in plant phytate, cutting the inorganic phosphate a ration needs — the mechanism whose price consequences are set by sulfur, phosphate rock and Chinese export policy, sized in Global Feed Phosphates. 2. Ingredient variability, and why local formulation data is worth more here Brazilian second-crop corn and Argentine corn differ materially in density, moisture and mycotoxin load from the US corn on which most commercial formulation models were calibrated. CONAB’s 2025/26 survey reports a first corn crop with a record 7,191 kg/hectare yield against a second crop of 112.1 million tonnes — two very different feedstocks inside one national supply. Near-infrared analysis of incoming grain and rapid mycotoxin testing are therefore worth more in Brazil than in a mature market, and a mill’s own formulation database is a genuine asset rather than a cost centre. The same variability runs through the protein side. A weak or strong crush margin — pulled by biodiesel and renewable diesel demand on the oil leg against feed demand on the meal leg — changes meal availability and price independently of what the feed market wants. A formula that cannot flex is a formula that loses money in half of all years. 3. Gut health and the antimicrobial transition Probiotics, organic acids, essential oils, prebiotics and zinc alternatives are the fastest-moving additive classes in Brazil, and the driver is exports rather than consumer sentiment. A producer selling into the EU or into stricter Asian markets faces specifications on antimicrobial use that its domestic customers do not, so gut-health adoption tracks export exposure almost exactly. This is also where the technical moat is deepest: these products only work inside a formulation and management system, which favours suppliers who employ field nutritionists. 4. Methane as a saleable outcome Feed is becoming an emissions product. dsm-firmenich’s Bovaer — approved by food-safety authorities in the EU, the UK and Japan and commercially available in more than 70 countries — reduces enteric methane by about 30% in dairy cows and up to 45% in beef cattle. The Brazilian evidence is local: at the DSM Beef Center GF in Rio Brilhante (Mato Grosso do Sul), trials reported a 38.2% reduction over 86 days across 30 Nellore animals and a 40% average reduction over 100 days across 20 cows. For a country with the world’s largest commercial cattle herd and a beef export trade under pressure to document low-carbon supply, an additive that produces a third-party-verifiable abatement number is a commercial instrument, not a cost. It also opens a new revenue logic: feed sold with a certified emissions outcome can be priced partly on the carbon market rather than only on weight gain — which is the most plausible route by which additive content per tonne rises fast enough to justify the value premium in our forecast. 5. Novel proteins, industrialised Insect protein and black soldier fly meal are Brazil’s most credible partial substitutes for fishmeal and soybean meal in aquaculture and pet food, and the country’s combination of organic waste volume and aquaculture growth makes it a natural production base. Our Global Black Soldier Fly and Global Insect Protein reports size the global opportunity; in Brazil the near-term use case is tilapia and shrimp feed, where fishmeal price volatility is the binding constraint and where the 2.00 Mt aquaculture segment is small enough for a new ingredient to matter. 6. Biosecurity and traceability as process technology The post-2023 investment cycle has been as much about contamination control as about capacity. Agroceres Multimix’s Quatro Pontes plant uses drag conveyors with self-cleaning mechanisms and lot-level traceability from raw material to delivery. De Heus’s Toledo line was authorised under Decreto 12.031/2024 and Portaria SDA 798/2023 specifically because it handles medicated premixes, and it runs ractopamine-free for the same reason. In a country whose commercial flocks are free of highly pathogenic avian influenza — and whose access to export markets depends on staying that way — process technology is risk management priced as capex. The data layer rides on top. dsm-firmenich’s FarmTell platform, with more than 15,000 users across 6,000 farms monitoring over 5 million animals, is the clearest Brazilian evidence that feed companies now sell software alongside supplements: a supplier that can show a farm its own performance data defends a price that a commodity premix cannot. The test for the next seven years Does additive and service intensity per tonne rise faster than tonnage? If it does, our 4.09% value CAGR is conservative and the 1.59-point gap to volume growth is too narrow. If it does not — if cheap grain lets formulators compete on price alone — Brazil converges on volume growth of 2.50% and value growth barely above it, and the 2033 figure lands nearer USD 53 billion than USD 58 billion. Every disclosed investment in the next chapter is a bet on the first outcome. - **Innovation:** Medium - **Patent Activity:** Low - **Maturity:** Mature ## Market Risk Five risks, ordered by how fast they can move a tonne Brazilian feed demand is unusually exposed to decisions made outside Brazil. The risks below are ranked by transmission speed rather than by likelihood, because a feed market that grows 3% a year can be moved by double digits in a single quarter by things that have nothing to do with nutrition. 1. Trade policy — the fastest channel China applies a safeguard to beef imports with an annual quota of roughly 1.1 million tonnes and additional tariffs on volumes above it. This is a feed-demand instrument before it is a beef-trade instrument: it changes where an animal is finished, and therefore whether it eats grass or a ration. It lands directly on the segment growing fastest — beef-cattle feed, up 7.5% in 2025 to 7.76 Mt — and on the confinement decision that produced that growth. The 2025 precedent is instructive. The 50% US tariff imposed on Brazilian goods that year led the beef packers’ association Abiec, representing companies including JBS and Marfrig, to estimate losses of USD 1 billion on the trade. The reallocation was visible in the data: by August 2025 Mexico had overtaken the United States as Brazil’s second-largest beef export destination. Every tonne redirected changes where an animal is finished and where its feed is milled. A tariff is a feed-demand shock wearing a trade costume. 2. Animal disease — the binary risk Brazil’s commercial flocks are currently free of highly pathogenic avian influenza (USDA/FAS, September 2026), and that status is worth more to the feed market than any domestic demand forecast. It has been tested: a single outbreak in a commercial flock at Montenegro (Rio Grande do Sul) was notified on 16 May 2025, the sanitary void began on 22 May, the flock was destroyed, and on 18 June 2025 the Ministry of Agriculture notified the World Organisation for Animal Health of the end of the void and self-declared the country free — after which it began notifying the countries that had restricted purchases. Weeks of disruption from one farm is the whole story. With broiler feed at 39.10 Mt and 33.12% of chicken production destined for export, a multi-state outbreak would remove demand from the largest single block of the market faster than any price signal could. Newcastle disease generates repeated rounds of export restrictions, with MAPA issuing updated restriction lists as recently as October 2026. 3. Grain price reversal and weather Today’s volumes are being bought with a record harvest: 361.7 million tonnes of grain, 144 million tonnes of corn, 180.4 million tonnes of soy, and corn at R$64.30 a sack in Campinas. This is the favourable tail of the distribution, not the middle of it. CONAB’s September 2026 survey flags the persistence of El Niño between September and November, with below-average rainfall expected across much of the North and Northeast and above-average rainfall with a risk of excess water in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. The specific risk for 2026–2033 is the reverse of the current condition. A corn price rise of 25% translates, at an implied 387.6 kilograms of corn per tonne of feed, into roughly R$250 a tonne of extra feed cost — against a conversion envelope of 15.25% to 21.65%. The customer cannot absorb that through efficiency, so it cuts stocking density instead. The lag between a grain price rise and a protein price rise is one to two quarters, and it is not in any forecast that extrapolates 2025. 4. Currency The real is the single most powerful variable in this market and almost nobody models it. Ingredients are 78.35% to 84.75% of finished feed value depending on whether you translate the R$180 billion ingredient bill at R$5.45 or at the 22 October 2026 PTAX of R$5.0383 — a 6.40-percentage-point swing in the conversion envelope produced by a 7.5% currency move. Phosphates, amino acids, vitamins and enzymes are dollar-linked and imported; corn and soy are priced for export parity in reais. A weaker real helps the exporter and hurts the additive buyer; a stronger one does the reverse. Ecuador’s experience is the extreme case: its feed complex pays an import premium on every tonne. 5. Concentration, captive feed and the undisclosed ratio Broilers and swine are 64.12% of the market, and one merger concentrated a large part of that order book inside a single balance sheet. MBRF’s post-merger captive-feed ratio has not been disclosed. If the combined company internalises more of its feed, merchant millers lose volume without losing a customer relationship they can see coming — the worst kind of loss. The same logic applies one layer up after Bunge-Viterra. Two risks we are not weighting heavily, and why Substitution away from animal protein. Plant-based alternatives have not moved Brazil’s per-capita meat consumption, and chicken consumption of 46.7 kg per head and pork of 19.1 kg are still rising. We see substitution as a long-horizon risk with no near-term tonnage effect. Additive supply crises. Amino acid and vitamin markets have had violent price episodes, but Brazilian mills respond by reformulating rather than by buying less feed. Price risk in additives moves value, not volume — which is precisely why it belongs in the value CAGR and not in the tonnage forecast. What would falsify this forecast Two consecutive quarters of declining mill output; a corn price rise above 25% with no matching pass-through into chicken and pork prices; a multi-state HPAI outbreak in commercial flocks; a Chinese safeguard outcome that reverses the cattle cycle and takes confinement back below 9 million head; or a BRL appreciation sharp enough to compress the conversion envelope below 15% for two consecutive seasons. - **Overall Risk:** Medium - **Geopolitical Exposure:** High - **Substitution Risk:** Low ## Regulatory Landscape One regulator, one register, and a shift to self-control Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAPA) regulates feed through its animal-inputs department. Any establishment that manufactures, fractions, imports, exports or sells feed, supplements, premixes, co-products, núcleos, pet food or feed additives must be registered with MAPA and appear on its published lists of registered establishments and products, which MAPA updates and republishes; the current product list was updated on 8 September 2026. The legal architecture was rebuilt between 2022 and 2025, and the direction of travel is deregulation by displacement — the state moving from pre-approval to audit. The load-bearing instruments are: Lei 6.198/1974 and Decreto 76.986/1976 — the original inspection and supervision framework for products destined for animal feed, still the statutory base. Instrução Normativa nº 4, of 23 February 2007 — the technical regulation on hygienic-sanitary conditions and good manufacturing practice (BPF) for feed manufacturing and fractioning establishments, with its inspection script; amended by IN 14/2016. This is the backbone of plant-level compliance and the reason a new line needs a validated BPF manual before it needs a customer. Lei 14.515/2022 — establishes self-control programmes for private agents regulated by agricultural defence, the administrative enforcement process, the Programme of Incentives for Conformity in Agricultural Defence, the Special Appeals Commission and the International Borders Surveillance Programme. Decreto 12.031/2024 (28 May 2024) — regulates mandatory inspection of products intended for animal feed, covering establishments and products, and is the instrument under which new or modified lines handling medicated premixes are authorised. Decreto 12.126/2024 (31 July 2024) — regulates self-control programmes and introduces risk-based inspection and surveillance: the firm becomes responsible for its own controls and the state for verifying them. Decreto 12.502/2025 (11 June 2025) — sets the rules for the administrative enforcement process, revoked two articles of Decreto 12.031 and provided for a conduct-adjustment term. Portaria SDA 798/2023 — governs authorisation of lines handling medications, which is why a plant making medicated piglet feed needs its own licence conditions, and why De Heus’s Toledo rebuild was authorised under it. Portaria MAPA 925/2026 (24 June 2026) — annual restatement of the fines attached to Lei 14.515, indexed to the INPC. The technical reference behind product registration is the Compêndio Brasileiro de Alimentação Animal, which lists approved ingredients, their specifications and their permitted use — in practice the document a formulator consults before a nutritionist ever sees a price list. What self-control means commercially Self-control favours scale. A company with a validated quality system, lot-level traceability and its own laboratory absorbs the compliance burden; a small mill faces the same obligations with a fraction of the revenue. Expect the regulatory framework itself to drive consolidation in Brazilian milling over the next five years, entirely independently of any merger — which is a stronger force than CADE’s case law and receives a fraction of the attention. The industry’s live policy ask: tax relief Sindirações states its central institutional objective as the implementation of tax relief (desoneração tributária) for the animal-feed industry, on the argument that it allows the private sector to invest more and makes Brazilian product more competitive internationally. This is the policy variable to watch: with a conversion envelope of 15.25% to 21.65%, a change in the federal tax treatment of feed inputs is not a marginal adjustment to profitability — on this cost structure it can be the difference between a viable mill and a marginal one. The industry’s representative body is a syndicate with roughly 140 members accounting for about 90% of the national market, which gives it unusual weight in a Brasília negotiation. The external regulator: EUDR The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 covers seven commodities — cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soy, wood and rubber — and therefore reaches two Brazilian feed inputs directly: soybean meal and cattle. The European Parliament and Council adopted a revised regulation on 19 December 2025 that added a further period before application and made substantive amendments, giving companies inside and outside the EU another year to prepare, with application now expected from the end of 2026. For Brazilian feed the operative point is that compliance is documentary and traceable rather than chemical: a mill buying soy from a trader must be able to show the plot, not just the silo. That favours large, vertically integrated supply chains and adds a fixed cost to small exporters — another force pushing the same way as self-control. Divergent product standards inside one market Ractopamine is the clearest example of a divergence with capital consequences. It is permitted in some markets and prohibited in others, and a mill serving both cannot switch formulations per truckload, so it builds dedicated ractopamine-free lines — as De Heus did at Toledo. The same logic applies to antimicrobial growth promoters and to maximum residue levels. Brazil’s mills are therefore building compliance into plant design rather than into product labelling. What to watch Whether the tax-relief agenda advances; how aggressively MAPA audits against Decreto 12.126’s self-control obligations; whether EUDR application from end-2026 survives without further delay; and whether MERCOSUR moves toward mutual recognition of feed-additive registrations, which would cut the cost of a regional launch by a factor rather than a percentage. Sources Sindirações — Entre ameaças e oportunidades: resiliência e protagonismo (17 March 2026): 91 Mt (2024), 94 Mt (2025), 97 Mt (2026) and all seven species segments. Sindirações — Palavra do Vice-Presidente: R$180 billion of 2025 ingredient turnover; approximately 140 members representing about 90% of the national market; the tax-relief objective. CNN Brasil, Forbes Brasil, Broadcast/Estadão and Globo Rural (all 30–31 March 2026): independent reporting of the 2025 result and 2026 projection, slaughter rates and the Cepea confinement census. CONAB — 12th Grain Survey, 2025/26 (15 September 2026): 361.7 Mt of grains, soy 180.4 Mt, corn 144 Mt, sorghum 7.35 Mt, and the El Niño outlook. USDA/FAS — Brazil Poultry and Products Annual, BR2026-0037 (15 September 2026): production, exports, domestic consumption and HPAI-free status. FeedConecta — corn, soybean meal and sorghum quotations compiled from Cepea and Deral, 22 October 2026, including the R$6.46 per tonne feed sensitivity and the PTAX rate. MAPA — Instrução Normativa nº 4, de 23 de fevereiro de 2007 (good manufacturing practice for feed establishments, amended by IN 14/2016). MAPA — agricultural defence legislation: Lei 14.515/2022, Decreto 12.502/2025 and Portaria MAPA 925/2026. - **Complexity:** High ## Frequently Asked Questions **Q: Is Brazil's feed market 97 million tonnes or 89.9 million tonnes?** Both, and the difference is a definition rather than a disagreement. Sindirações measures complete rations and mineral supplements together and reports 94 Mt for 2025 and a 97 Mt projection for 2026. Alltech's Agri-Food Outlook counts industrial compound feed only, mill by mill, and puts Brazil at 89.904 Mt. The 4.096 Mt gap — 4.36% of the national total — is the mineral-salt and supplement layer. This report uses the Sindirações measure because it is the series the Brazilian industry itself plans against, and states the narrower figure wherever the two could be confused. **Q: Why does the value forecast grow faster than the volume forecast?** Because milling alone cannot generate it. Volume grows 2.50% a year to 114.5 Mt in 2033 while value grows 4.09% to USD 58.08 billion, and the 1.59-point gap assumes that a tonne of feed carries more additive, premix and service content in 2033 than in 2025. That is a judgement, not an observation: ingredients are already 78.35% to 84.75% of finished feed value, leaving a conversion envelope of 15.25% to 21.65% out of which industrial cost, freight, energy and profit all come. If additive intensity per tonne does not rise, value converges on volume growth and the 2033 figure lands nearer USD 53 billion. **Q: Will beef cattle feed keep growing at 7.5% a year?** No. Beef-cattle feed grew 7.5% in 2025 to 7.76 Mt on a 16% jump in confinement from 7.96 to 9.25 million head, and we forecast it to 8.23 Mt in 2026. But dividing one by the other shows the segment feeds 0.839 tonnes of ration per confined head, falling to 0.823 tonnes if 2026 reaches 10 million head at 8.23 Mt. The growth is more animals being housed, not each animal being fed longer — and housing is a decision an operator re-takes every season, exposed directly to China's 1.1 million tonne beef safeguard. We forecast the segment decelerating inside an otherwise compounding market. **Q: What margin does a Brazilian feed mill actually earn?** A spread, not a margin. Sindirações reports R$180 billion of ingredient turnover for 94 Mt of output, or R$1,914.89 per tonne of finished feed. At the 22 October 2026 PTAX of R$5.0383 that is USD 380.07 against a benchmark finished-feed price of USD 448.45 — so ingredients are 84.75% of revenue and 15.25% is left for industrial cost, energy, freight, working capital and profit. At the R$5.45 rate used in our regional report the ingredient share is 78.35% and 21.65% is left. A 7.5% currency move therefore swings the entire conversion envelope by 6.40 percentage points, which is why this business is decided by buying grain well and financing inventory cheaply rather than by formulation.