Farmers have started harvesting soybeans but heavy rains that arrived after months of drought have slowed efforts to gather the parched crops, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said today.
Downpours have been bogging down harvesting machines as they try to move across fields in the Pampas farm belt that were bone dry only two months ago during the dog days of the Southern Hemisphere summer.
The hot, dry weather hit soy and was especially hard on corn, which needs moisture during its shorter and more delicate flowering period.
«Rain over the last seven days interrupted harvesting in much of the central soy belt,» the exchange said in its weekly crop report. While soybeans were just starting to be collected, 12 percent of this season’s corn crop is already in.
Argentina is the world’s No. 1 exporter of soyoil, used for cooking and in the booming international biofuels sector. The country is also a major supplier of soybeans and corn, and loads an average 200,000 tonnes of farm products per day.
Last week the exchange cut its estimate for 2011/12 corn harvest to 20.8 million tonnes, from a previous 21.3 million tonnes, due to the drought.
Soy, which has a longer flowering period that allows more time to absorb moisture, was less hard hit by the dryness. The exchange sees this season’s soy harvest at 46.2 million tonnes.
Soybeans, plus the vegetable oil and livestock feed made from them, account for about half of nation’s export tax collection.
The government sees corn output of between 21 million and 22 million tonnes, and plans to set 8 million tonnes of that aside for domestic use.
buenosairesherald.com