August 20, 2007

 

Argentina 07-08 corn area seen up 13.9 percent on-year

 

 

Argentina will plant 3.27 million hectares of corn during the 2007-08 season, a 13.9 percent increase from the 2006-07 season, the Buenos Aries Cereal' Exchange said in its weekly crop report Friday (Aug 17).

 

The exchange had previously forecast corn area would increase between 20 percent and 25 percent. The lack of available fertilizer, seeds and fuel has decreased expectations, according to the exchange.

 

Meanwhile, the 2006-07 corn harvest is practically finished, with just a few fields remaining to be harvested in the north of Santa Fe Province, the Agriculture Secretariat said in its weekly crop report Friday (Aug 17).

 

Heavy rainfall late in the season spurred very high yields and record production of 22 million tonnes, the report said.

 

Argentina will plant 3.9 million hectares with corn in 2007-08, up over 9 percent from the 3.57 hectares planted with corn in 2006-07, the Secretariat reported.

 

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

 

According to USDA estimates, Argentina is expected to produce 24 million tonnes of corn and 47 million tonnes of soy for this crop. 

 

Argentina has sold 13.5 million tonnes of 2006-07 (March-February) corn for export as of Aug. 17, unchanged since June, the Agriculture Secretariat said.

 

Last November, the government froze the export registry in the face of soaring export declarations.

 

In June, the Agriculture Secretariat announced the reopening of the corn export registry for 3 million tonnes, but the quota was filled within a week.

 

By this time last year, Argentina had sold 7.12 million tonnes of 2005-06 corn.

 

The Secretariat provided the following updated information. Each figure represents thousands of metric tonnes sold.

Argentina' historical production estimates in millions of metric tonnes, according to the Agriculture Secretariat: