Brazil to enjoy bumper grain harvest

Brazil is set to embrace a bumper harvest in agriculture in the 2013/14 harvesting season that officially kicked off Tuesday, according to official statistics. The total production of grain, rice and soy is predicted to reach 193.6 million tons, said the National Supply Company, adding that soy output is expected to hit 95 million tons, which will make Brazil the world's leading soy producer. President Dilma Rousseff hailed the harvest a "victory" for the agro-industry, promising to allocate 136 billion Brazilian reals (56.6 billion U.S. dollars) to the agriculture in 2014, an 18-percent increase over the year before. According to official forecast, Brazil's agro-industrial gross domestic product (GDP) in 2014 will reach 1.03 trillion reals (429 billion U.S. dollars), 4 percent higher than that of 2013 and 34 percent higher than that a decade ago.