Weekly Report - 27 April 2017 (WR-17-16)

ARGENTINA | Expecting a bumper grain harvest. On 19 April Argentina’s agroindustry ministry said that it expects that the country’s grain harvest this year will exceed 130m tonnes (t). The ministry’s positive projections come despite the fact that heavy rains in January and February produced significant flooding in some of the country’s crop growing areas such as Córdoba, Santa Fe, and Buenos Aires provinces. This sparked concerns that this year’s harvest could prove to be poor, to the detriment of Argentina’s domestic economy, given that the country is one of the world’s main grain producers and exporters. But after conducting technical evaluations, including the analysis of satellite pictures, the agroindustry ministry said that while 1m hectares (ha) of crops – 750,000ha of soya and 250,000ha of maize – had been lost as a result of the flooding, this reduced production would be offset by increased projected grain production in areas not affected by the rains. Evidence of this has also been provided by the Buenos Aires grain exchange, which has reported that 5.5m ha of land has been sown with wheat in the country this year, 7.8% more than in the 2016/2017 harvest season and the highest total wheat planted area in Argentina in a decade. The grain exchange therefore forecasts that the 2017/2018 wheat harvest could yield 17.5m t. The agroindustry ministry goes further and forecasts that the 2017/2018 harvest would produce 18.39m t of wheat.

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