February 28, 2007

Mexico's Sinaloa 2006/07 white corn harvest seen up by 21 percent
 

Sowing for Mexico's 2006/07 fall-winter harvest of white corn in the key grains state of northern Sinaloa is up 23 percent on the year-ago harvest, a leading corn producer Association in Sinaloa said Tuesday.

Encouraged by the best prices in decades, corn producers have sown an estimated 530,000 hectares for the new 2006/07 crop cycle in Sinaloa, which is made up almost exclusively of the fall-winter harvest of white corn, Melchor Godoy, coordinator for the Propietarios Rurales association said.

This is up 23 percent from the 430,000 hectares sown last year and is expected to produce a record harvest of at least 5 million tonnes, up 21 percent on the 2005/06 fall-winter white corn harvest of 4.115 million tonnes in Sinaloa, Godoy told Dow Jones Newswires.

"We are now talking about 530,000 hectares for this cycle, compared with the 430,000 hectares planted last year, including 50,000 hectares of corn in the spring-summer harvest which we have not had before," he said.

"Sowing has increased a lot this year, first because there were very good rains during September and October and farmers took advantage of that and planted at the time, and that was followed by the high prices," Godoy said.

The Propietarios Rurales association has 25,000 corn producer members from across Sinaloa state, with the average size of farms at about 20 hectares. They account for about 40 percent of Sinaloa's corn producers, according to Godoy.

The latest figures confirm reports that have circulated for weeks among traders that planting for the Sinaloa harvest has been sharply up this year. The Sinaloa white corn harvest starts between the end of April and mid-May.

Sinaloa is Mexico's largest state for commercial grains production sold to industrial manufacturers of the key Mexican staple, tortillas.

Mexico's 2006/07 grains crop cycle is made up of the fall-winter crop - which was planted between October and December last year and harvested in May and June - and the spring-summer crop, which is planted between December and February and harvested between August and November.