February 4, 2008

Recent rainfalls to boost Argentine soy, too late for corn

Rainfall in Argentina over the past week provided a timely boost to the young soy crop, but arrived too late to reverse drought damage to much of the 2007-08 corn production.

Argentina's agriculture secretariat said in its weekly crop report Friday that rain fell over much of the agricultural heartland this week and temperatures cooled, providing relief to the corn crop that had been suffering from insufficient moisture in December and January.

The moisture will benefit late corn and help finish off the early plantings, but yields are expected to be down from last season due to the dry weather during key development phases.

As of January 31, farmers had planted 98 percent of the 4 million hectares seen going to corn this season, two percentage points behind the planting pace on the same date last year, according to the Secretariat.

Meanwhile, this week's rains were more beneficial for the young soy crop, which had been struggling due to the dry weather.

Farmers had planted 99 percent of the record 16.6 million hectares allotted for soy as of January 31.

Shown below are estimates for Argentina's 2007-08 crop production in millions of hectares (ha) or millions of metric tonnes (mt).