MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Abundant rainfall anticipates a record soy bean crop for Argentina

According to the USDA Argentina will harvest 53 million tons of the oil seed

Plentiful rains are anticipating excellent summer crops in Argentina both for maize and soy beans according to the Buenos Aires Cereals Stock market and the US Department of Agriculture, USDA, estimates.

Corn production is expected to increase in an extra million tons while the soy crop should be above the 52 million tons. If the 52 million tons are confirmed it would be a record harvest for Argentina.

“Fortunately in the last days of January and beginning of February new hydro contributions sealed the fate of most of the plantations, improving their productive potential”, said the Buenos Aires Cereals market.

According to the same reports the area in Argentina sown with corn for the 2009/2010 crop reached 2.4 million hectares compared to 2.86 million hectares a year ago. The USDA end of January maize crop estimate for Argentina stood at 17.2 million tons.

Argentina is the world’s second exporter of corn and third of soy beans and number one in soy flour, oil and other sub-products. The last crop, 2008/2009, was only 32 million tons, ravaged by scarce rainfall.

Nevertheless even when last week’s rainfall anticipates an optimum development support for the soy crop in the main area and periphery “in some of the areas worst hit by the prolonged drought, rain fall is still needed”.

According to the USDA, Argentina planted 19 million hectares of soybeans and the 2009/10 harvest could reach 53 million tons.

Regarding the winter wheat crop and with the harvest over, the Buenos Aires Cereal market estimates the crop to have reached 7.4 million tons, while the Argentine government estimate is of 7.48 million tons.