January 8, 2008

 

Argentina soy crop aided by rain, but still dry
 

 

Rainfall over the past week helped farmers plant the 2007-08 soy crop in areas of central Argentina, even as continued dryness in central Cordoba, southeast Buenos Aires and elsewhere prevented planting and continued to threaten future yields, the Buenos Aires Cereals Exchange said in its weekly crop report on Monday (January 7, 2008).

 

The showers led the exchange to raise its forecast for area going to soys this season to a record 16.9 million hectares, up from a previous estimate of 16.8 million.

 

As of Jan. 4, farmers had planted 91 percent of the 16.9 million hectares, according to the exchange.

 

The planting pace is 4.5 percentage points behind the pace at this time last year. 

 

As of Jan. 4, farmers had planted 92.5 percent of the 2007-08 corn crop, 2.4 percentage points behind the pace a year earlier, the exchange said. An estimated 3.2 million hectares are seen going to the crop this season, 11.5 percent more than in the 2006-07 season, according to the exchange. Most of the fields still to be seeded are in the north of the country and rainfall in the north of Cordoba province last week helped farmers restart planting that had been delayed by dryness for more than a month, the exchange said.

 

In the district of Marcos Juarez in Cordoba, the traditional epicenter of corn cultivation, rainfall has helped improve crop conditions. Even so, conditions are less than desired and yields expected to be 10 percent to 15 percent less than hoped for, the exchange said.

 

As of Jan. 4, farmers had harvested 90 percent of the area planted with wheat this season, 8.1 percentage points behind last year's pace. Yields have averaged 2.9  tonnes per hectare, up 280 kilograms per hectare from last season, the exchange said.

 

Crop yields vary widely by area because of losses caused by frost damage in the south in November, the exchange said. 

 

Sunseed planting is all but wrapped up, with farmers seeding 2.7 million hectares with sunseeds, up 13.2 percent from last year.

 

Farmers have begun bringing in the crop, with 2.9 percent collected by Jan. 4, the exchange said. That's 6.8 percentage points behind the pace of last year, it added.

 

Estimates for Argentina's  2007-08 crop production in millions of hectares (HA) or millions of  tonnes (MT):

 

	Wheat	Soy	Corn	Sunseed
Agriculture Sec't	15.4MT	16.6HA	4HA	2.6HA
USDA	15MT	47MT	22.5MT	4.5MT
B.A. Cereals Exchange	15.2MT	16.8HA	3.2HA	2.7HA