The country's soya crop should reach 52 million tonnes this season, up from 50 million tonnes previously forecast, the Rosario Grains Exchange said late on Wednesday. The Buenos Aires Grains Exchange followed on Thursday with a report saying excessive rains may cause it to cut estimated planting area.
The Rosario exchange said the increase in its forecast for the size of the 2018/19 crop came despite the loss of 700,000 hectares of soya planting area due to excessive rainfall. The warning of a cut in estimated sowing area from the Buenos Aires exchange also cited harder than normal rain.
"The rains that accumulated during the last weekend in parts of the central and northern agricultural belt could provoke new losses of harvestable area," the Buenos Aires exchange said in its weekly crop report. But it said most farm areas had been getting healthy levels of rain and crop conditions were mostly good to excellent. It kept its 2018/19 harvest forecast at 53 million tonnes.
The harvest expected to start in March should nonetheless be 49 percent bigger than the previous season's drought-hit crop, the Rosario exchange said in a monthly report. In the 2018-19 season, the Pampas grains belt has faced the opposite problem, with heavy rains swamping some non-core growing areas.
"Despite rain-related losses, the first estimates show promising yields. Early-planted fields appear to have an average national yield of 3.08 tonnes per hectare," the report said, warning that later-planted areas were not doing as well. A recent cold front in the Pampas, an area centered in northern Buenos Aires province and the southern parts of Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Cordoba - has moderated rainfall, the report said.
The country's corn crop for the season is now seen at a record 46.5 million tonnes, compared to the 44 million tonnes estimated earlier, the exchange said. Argentina is the world's biggest exporter of soyameal livestock feed and soyaoil, as well as a major supplier of raw soyabeans, corn and wheat.