February 1, 2012

Argentina's 2011 soy crush up 1.4%

In its latest crushing report, the Argentinean government said Tuesday (Jan 31) that the country's 2011 soy crushing activity rose 1.4% to 37.3 million tonnes compared with the previous year.

In December, 2.85 million tonnes of soy were crushed in the South American country, up 6.2% from the same period of 2010, the Agriculture Ministry report said.

Argentina is the world's top supplier of soyoil and soymeal and the No. three exporter of unprocessed beans.

Farmers produced 544,225 tonnes of soyoil in December, a 5.7% on-year rise, the report said. Full-year 2011 output came in at 7.1 million tonnes, slightly above the seven million tonnes produced in 2010.

Soymeal output rose 6.1% in December from a year earlier to 2.2 million tonnes, while 28.7 million tonnes of the by product were produced in all of 2011 versus 28.3 million tonnes on the previous year.

Argentina's 2011/12 soy planting is in an advanced stage. The state-run National Institute for Agricultural Technology (INTA) expects a soy harvest of 43-47 million tonnes.

Farmers are worried about the impact of scorching dry weather related to the La Nina weather anomaly that threatens to upset commodity markets and has led several analysts to slash their estimates for Argentine crops.

Harvesting of Argentina's 2010/11 soy ended with a crop of 48.9 million tonnes, while the previous season's harvest was a record 52.7 million tonnes, according to government figures.