April 14, 2008

 

Argentina soy harvest leaps forward on dry weather

 

 

Argentina's 2007-08 soy harvest leapt ahead this week, with farmers taking advantage of dry weather to advance 16.5 percent while corn and sun seed harvesting have been positive as well, according to the Buenos Aires Cereals Exchange on Friday in its weekly crop report.

 

Farmers have harvested 35.5 percent of the crop to date, up 14.5 percent from last year when the harvest was delayed by heavy rainfall.

 

Yields have averaged 3.2 tonnes per hectare, over 10 percent less than last season, when the heavy rainfall spurred extremely high yields.

 

Some of the northern soy fields are lacking moisture and early frosts are threatening to fall over the next weeks, but only a small percentage of the crop may be affected and doesn't pose a major risk to the nationwide output, the Exchange said.

 

The Exchange forecast soy output to be at a record of 48 million tonnes.

 

 

Corn 
 

About 39 percent of the corn crop has been harvested to date, up 8.1 percent from last year's corresponding period, according to the Exchange.

 

The harvest pace slowed over the past week as farmers focused on harvesting soy, the Exchange said.

 

Yields average 7.1 tonnes per hectare, down 1.6 tonnes per hectare from this point last year, when they were exceptionally high due to heavy rainfall.

 

Last week, the Exchange increased its forecast for 2007-08 corn production by 500,000 tonnes to 21 million tonnes due to unexpectedly high yields across much of the corn belt.

 

 

Sun seed
 

Farmers have harvested 95.6 percent of the 2007-08 sunseed crop as of April 11, with yields averaging 1.7 tonnes per hectare. The Exchange forecast sun seed output to be at 4.4 million tonnes, up 17 percent from last year.