Rains in Argentina's central agricultural areas over recent days should continue over the next few weeks, and have already helped restart corn plantings that had been slowed by dryness in September, a weather specialist said on Tuesday.
Argentina is the world's No 2 corn supplier after the United States, gathering a record harvest of 22.9 million tonnes in the 2010/11 crop season, according to the government's most recent estimate. But dry soils have slowed farmers' progress and the tempo of planting is 16.6 percentage points behind last season's pace.
"With the rains that have fallen, everybody can plant," said Stella Carballo, a weather specialist at the state-run National Institute of Agricultural Technology, or INTA by its Spanish acronym. "In Buenos Aires province the rains were very good, between 40 millimeters (1.6 inch) and 100 millimeters in some places," she added.
Through Thursday, growers had sown 23.7 percent of the 3.5 million hectares (8.6 million acres) slotted for commercial-use corn, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said last week. "There's going to be an increase in the frequency of showers in October and November," Carballo said. Argentina could gather a record crop of about 30 million tonnes of corn in the 2011/12 season and between 52 million and 53 million tonnes of soya, an Agriculture Ministry official told Reuters last month.
Buenos Aires is Argentina's top producing province for corn, wheat and soya. The Agriculture Ministry forecasts 2011/12 wheat production at between 11 million and 13 million tonnes, down from 14.7 million tonnes in the prior season because of several months of scant rainfall in important growing areas. The wheat areas worst hit by earlier dryness were in western Buenos Aires, southern and central Santa Fe, southern Cordoba and parts of La Pampa province. The new, welcome moisture will also allow farmers to lay a good foundation for soya seeding, which is set to start this month in the world's No 3 soyabean-exporting nation.
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