By R. Viswanathan (*) - India should take its cue from Brazil and invest in ethanol as a viable commercial substitute for costly petrol.
Argentina is on track to harvest more wheat this season as greater acreage and coming warm weather should offset any yield loss caused by recent frosts that hit in the last days of the Southern Hemisphere winter.
The recent rain, wind and cold storm that severely punished Uruguayan farmers last week caused the death of 54.200 adult sheep. The sum from a survey conducted by the Uruguayan Wool Secretariat, SUL, almost doubles the original 30.000 estimate and does not include the recently born lambs.
Argentina’s 2013/14 soybean crop will be above 50 million tons while corn can be expected to reach 30 million tons, according to the country’s Agriculture minister Norberto Yauhar, based on preliminary production estimates. The minister also advanced that caps on wheat and corn exports could be lifted in the near future.
Three years has seen the overturn of two government, the deaths of thousands of people and the destruction of much of the Egyptian economy. In the end, the mobs have changed nothing, except to make their own lives more miserable.
United States corn exporters are concerned with the fact that Venezuela, one of their prime markets, is now a full member of Mercosur, which includes Brazil and Argentina two major exporting countries.
China in just a year has become Uruguay’s main client for beef absorbing 25% of exports equivalent to 190 million dollars in the last agriculture year (July 2012/June 2013). Uruguay exports totalled 390.000 tons according to the latest release from the country’s Meats Institute, INAC.
Thousands of sheep dead, 1.500 people evacuated, blown roofs, flooded roads and farm land was the result of three days non-stop of pouring rainfall and strong winds that punished Uruguay beginning last Friday.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) praised Argentina’s Law on Rural Lands (Ley de Tierras Rurales), stating that the measure could serve as an example for the region. FAO has invited Argentine representatives to expound their experience with the law at a workshop to be staged next week in the Colombian capital of Bogotá.
Brazil is to top the world soybean production league for the first time, thanks to the incentive to farmers provided from resilient prices and a weak Real, overtaking the US, whose hopes have been dented by drought.