04/09/2026News
Renegotiations of rural debts reach R$ 23.2 billion in Rio Grande do Sul.
Published on September 4, 2026 at 8:42 AM
Renegotiations of rural credit reached R$ 23.2 billion in Rio Grande do Sul in June, a movement that exposes the accumulated financial pressure on producers after successive weather-related losses. However, this progress leaves open the question of how much of this liability has actually been settled and how much has simply had its payment deferred to future years.
Data from the Central Bank (BC) shows that renegotiations are part of a stock of R$ 42.7 billion in rural credit classified as problematic in the State. The concept does not necessarily mean default: in addition to operations with overdue installments, it includes extended and renegotiated debts.
The movement gained momentum after the successive climatic events faced by Rio Grande do Sul. An analysis of the Central Bank's data series by lawyer Guilherme Caprara , a specialist in restructuring and insolvency and founding partner of MSC Advogados , indicates that the state had approximately R$ 8 billion in problematic credit before the 2024 floods. The stock exceeded R$ 20 billion after the disaster and reached the current R$ 42.7 billion .
In 2024, the growth occurred mainly due to extensions granted to address the effects of the floods . Later, renegotiations gained importance . According to Caprara, they were close to R$ 5 billion at the beginning of that year and now reach R$ 23.2 billion.
In Brazil, the stock of problematic rural credit reached R$ 197.1 billion in June . Rio Grande do Sul, therefore, accounts for more than 20% of the national total .
According to Caprara, growth helps identify financial difficulties before they escalate to more serious situations , such as foreclosures or bankruptcy filings. He cautions, however, that a renegotiated transaction cannot be treated as delinquent debt, nor does it necessarily mean that the producer is heading towards insolvency. " A renegotiation can resolve a temporary difficulty, such as a crop failure, but it can also simply postpone a structural problem ," he states.
The data also does not allow us to determine how much of the R$ 23.2 billion renegotiated corresponds to producers who will be able to resume payments normally and how much may again face difficulties . For Caprara, the progress shows a greater need for debt restructuring , but it does not allow us to anticipate how many operations may result in default or judicial reorganization.
Indicators from Serasa Experian add an important perspective. Although Rio Grande do Sul has accumulated a high volume of renegotiated and extended debt payments, the default rate among rural individuals remains below the Brazilian average .
In the fourth quarter of 2025, the unemployment rate in Rio Grande do Sul was 5.3%, compared to 8.2% nationally. In the first quarter of 2026, it rose to 5.8%, while the national average reached 8.8%. Even with the worsening, Rio Grande do Sul still had the lowest rate among the states of the Federation.
According to Frederico Poleto , agricultural data manager at Serasa Experian, the numbers show two simultaneous situations. There is financial pressure on producers in Rio Grande do Sul , but it had not yet translated into debts overdue by more than 180 days with the same intensity observed nationally.
“There was real financial pressure, but a significant portion is being managed through debt restructuring,” Poleto assesses. “ The final outcome will depend on the ability of future harvests to generate sufficient cash flow to meet the new schedules.”
He links the growth of problematic operations to the series of shocks faced by the State: the floods of September 2023, the extreme event of April and May 2024, and a new drought in the first months of 2025. During this period, different measures were also adopted to extend, renegotiate, or finance debts .
These measures may initially increase the amount of debt classified by the Central Bank as problematic precisely because they restructure a financial difficulty before it turns into a prolonged default .
Poleto emphasizes that the indicators from the Central Bank and Serasa cannot be directly compared. The Central Bank measures, in reais, rural credit balances in different situations, while Serasa calculates the proportion of rural individuals with debts overdue for more than 180 days with banks, cooperatives, agribusinesses, suppliers of inputs and machinery, and other creditors linked to agriculture. " The numbers are complementary, not directly reconcilable ," he summarizes.