January 8, 2004

South African 2003-04 Corn Planting 20% Lower

South African farmers seem to have cut their corn plantings for the 2003-04 season by 20% due to the widespread drought affecting the country, producer body Grain South Africa said Wednesday.

After conducting a survey of more than 2,000 grain farmers Monday and Tuesday, from which it received 600 responses, Grain SA said the central Free State province has been worst afected by the lack of summer rainfall.

The organization warned that if "meaningful rain" of around 50 millimeters Doesn't fall across all grain growing areas over the next three weeks, the drought could reach "disaster" proportions leading to large scale imports.

"The survey result is better than we expected and shows that there are good patches in some provinces," said Steve Shone, Grain SA's general manager.

"We thought plantings would fall to 65%-70% of last year's levels."

While the National Crop Estimates Committee is expected to release its first official estimate of the summer grain planting area later this month, several analysts have already forecast that the 2003-04 corn area will fall to 2.5-2.7 million hectares from 3.1 million hectares in 2002-03.

The first official production estimate is due in late February and is likely to put output at 6.0-7.0 million metric tons, sharply lower than the 9.3 million tons produced last season.

But if rain does not fall in the critical January growing period, output could be under 6.0 million tons, wiping out carry-over stock from last year and necessitating corn imports for the first time in many years.

Shone is optimistic that sufficient corn will be produced to avert large scale imports, which he said would cause a "logistical nightmare" due to the difficulty of transporting corn from the country's harbors to inland regions.