December 22, 2009

Drought affects Venezuela's corn output

Venezuela's corn harvest has been affected by a severe drought, and corn imports will increase as domestic production will not be able to cover demand.

This was reported by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Monday (Dec 21).

A fall of about 20% in domestic corn production year-to-year to 1.5 million tonnes is estimated, with yields at about 3.5 tonnes per hectare. Of that, some 500,000 tonnes are yellow corn. For the first time in 20 years the government imported some 100,000 tonnes of white corn from Mexico.

Larger imports of yellow corn are expected to occur to meet animal feed manufacturers' needs. Estimates are that the government will issue import licenses for about 1.2 million tonnes of yellow corn for 2010. However feed manufacturers think that they will need about 400,000 tonnes more.

Even though the climate has hurt the domestic agricultural sector, feed manufacturers remain optimistic for the next year. They pointed out that animal feed manufacturing is tied to the growing poultry and pork domestic sectors.