Argentine soy yields and harvesting area have been chopped by drought to their lowest levels since the 2008/09 season, analysts said on Thursday, citing the effect of a four-month dry spell that suddenly gave way to floods in April.
A protest by grain transporters in Argentina could leave exporters and crushers operating without soy, corn and wheat, an industry group said on Monday.
Argentine oil crushing industry workers reached over the weekend a much disputed salary agreement, ending a 26 day strike, and hopefully resuming activities which have paralyzed the Rosario cereals and oilseeds stock market and forced a queue of over 140 vessels and barges along the Paraná river.
The head of an Argentine soy crushers' union expressed optimism on Thursday that a salary agreement was near and would end the strike, which has affected the key Rosario soy market.
The soy market in Argentina's pivotal grains hub was virtually paralyzed for the fifth day on Friday as most exporters refrained from purchases in a bid to pressure the government to resolve a nearly three-week long strike among crushing workers.
A strike of dock workers in Argentina's grains and oilseeds export hub Rosario was holding on Tuesday for the second day running 126 ships, which are queuing and waiting to load.
Argentina's river Paraná is blocked since early March when a Cypriot flagged vessel broke down with a 45.000 tons cargo of soybeans, thus holding back access of another eighty vessels waiting to load in Rosario and other ports in the heartland of the grains and oilseeds country.
Argentine longshoremen on strike at the peak of summer harvests exports have scores of grains ships delayed in and around due to a three-day-old conflict that threatens to bog down shipments at a time of heightened world demand for South American soy and corn, according to industry sources.
The Argentine maritime workers union, SOMU, decided not to work overtime, a measure which affects most ports from inland Rosario on the Paraná River to Bahía Blanca on the South Atlantic, when thousands of trucks are lined up with the summer harvest.
Tens of cargo ships are delayed in Argentina because a grain-bulk carrier has grounded in the Parana River, 150 kilometres south of the city of Rosario, which is the country’s grains and oil seeds hub.