Argentine wheat planted area rises to 6.6m ha despite rains: BAGE

Swift progress of planting wheat in Argentina lifted the anticipated planted area to an 18-year high of 6.6 million ha last week, despite recent rains that caused some losses in the north of the country, the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange (BAGE) said Thursday.

That is up from the exchange's previous view of 6.4 million ha to put it in line with the estimate of the Rosario Board of Trade (BCR).

“Although there have been loss in the areas of the north [of the country] due to water excess that has not allowed plantings to finish, the intention of sowing in the rest of Argentina has increased in greater measure, allowing us to increase our projection,” BAGE said in its weekly report.

Wheat sowing has reached 60.9% this week, a weekly progress of 11.2 points.

The barley harvest progressed slowly due to the rains, with 61.6% collected of the total 730,000 ha, down 7.3 points on the year.

Meanwhile, the soybean harvest continued slowly with progress stuck at 99.5% and 80,000 ha yet to be harvested, but yields were consistent on the week averaging at 3.67 mt/ha across the country, the agency said.

Finally, the corn harvest moved up just 1.8 points on the week to 46%, hampered by the continuing wet weather, which kept the harvest progress near one of the lowest paces in recent years with 3.3 million hectares of grain yet to be pulled up.

BAGE kept its soybean and corn production forecast unchanged at 56 million and 48 million mt, respectively.