Buenos Aires – November 24, 2020
WEATHER woes afflicting Argentina’s cropping regions this year have been extensive and look set to worsen in December, with the La Niña phenomenon running at its strongest level in almost a decade.
Many areas of Argentina have been in a moisture deficit since March, and the spring rains have been very sporadic, seriously impacting winter-crop production and the summer-crop planting program.
The weather forecasts have not been matching reality, the expected rain has not been turning up for the dance, and the dryer-than-normal pattern is expected to slow the Argentine summer-crop planting program.
The Buenos Aires Grain reported soybean-planting progress jumped in the week to 19 November, propelled by scattered rains that brought light relief to key drought-hit regions.
Experts estimates that 28.8 per cent of a total projected soybean area of 17.2 million hectares (Mha) has been sown thus far, up from 19.9pc planted a week earlier, but still 2.5 percentage points behind last year’s pace.
Conversely, the seeding of this season’s corn crop has stalled, due to both the extremely dry seedbed and a reluctance to plant during November to avoid flowering in the peak of summer.
Moisture permitting, seeding will resume in earnest in December, with the total planted area forecast to reach 6.3Mha this season, down from 6.5Mha in 2019-20.
However, many parts of the country remain woefully dry, and it is believed that some of the early sown row-crop fields in the driest regions will have to be replanted when soil-moisture levels improve sufficiently.
Argentinian Ag experts called the corn crop 31.4pc planted as of 19 November. This was virtually unchanged from 31.2pc a week earlier but well behind last year’s pace of 46pc. The corn area planted to date is rated 10pc poor, 55pc fair, and 35pc good to excellent, but a moisture top-up is urgently required.
Wheat yields
Meanwhile, the winter-crop harvest is progressing slowly, and early yields are abysmal as a result of the extremely dry growing season, particularly in the northern provinces.
As of Thursday last week, 19.8pc of the forecast wheat area had been harvested, up from 15.5pc a week earlier.
The yields improved slightly week on week from an average of 1t/ha to 1.2t/ha.
However, with a planted area of 6.5Mha, there needs to be a dramatic recovery in yields if final production is going to get remotely close to the Argentina Ag production estimate of 16.8 Mt, let alone the US Ag 18 Mt forecast.
In fact, the balance of the harvest will need to average almost 3t/ha just to make the Argentina forecast number.
The wheat crop is currently rated at 17pc good to excellent, 40pc fair and 43p poor to very poor.
