Dry weather fires Argentina wheat planting, corn harvest: BAGE

Improving weather across Argentina’s agricultural heartlands has fired wheat and barley plantings and seen a major step up in the pace of the corn harvest, according to a weekly update from the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange, Thursday.

The corn harvest, which has been eking out a slim 3-4% increase in recent weeks as rains prevented farmers from getting into their fields, jumped 7.9 percentage points to reach 61% complete.

BAGE maintained its forecast of 48 million mt for the total corn harvest, despite yields “surpassing the initial expectations in a large part,” of the central regions.

Trade sources had anticipated an increase in the harvest pace, as pressure has been renewed on the country’s Up River corn FOB basis values.

Wheat also saw a significant increase in its planting pace, with 92.1% of the expected 6.6 million hectares now planted and only around 520,000 ha still to plant.

Barley planting jumped by 31.8 percentage points over the last two weeks, with 81.6% of the 950,000 ha it expects to see planted this year now complete, although the report warned that some wheat and barley plantings had encountered frost damage.

“In the province of Cordoba, some fields planted with both cereals have partial damage due to frost, but they can recover as long as good weather conditions prevail in the coming days,” the report said.