Argentine farmers have harvested 20 percent of all farmlands sown with 2004/05 soyabeans and yields so far are good, the government said on Friday in its weekly crop report. While rains earlier in the week halted the harvest in parts of Santa Fe, Cordoba and Buenos Aires provinces - the top three soya producers - gathering advanced 9 percentage points over the prior week, the government said in its first detailed account of the harvest's progress.
The pace of gathering beats last season's tempo by just 1 percentage point.
In southern Santa Fe, the top producer, yields average between 3.1 tonnes and 3.5 tonnes per hectare.
Asian soyabean rust has struck there but farmers sprayed some plots of susceptible, later-seeded soya with fungicides.
"And because those plots are in advanced stages of development, an increase in the intensity of the disease would not affect yields," the Agriculture Secretariat said in the report, which is current to Thursday.
In many growing areas, recent rains have helped later-seeded soya plants recover after suffering from dry soil conditions.
In southern Cordoba soya yields average 3.3 tonnes per hectare, while they range from between 0.6 tonnes to 5.0 tonnes per hectare in Buenos Aires province.
Argentine farmers seeded 14.2 million hectares with 2004/05 soyabeans and the government forecasts output of a record 37.5 million tonnes. The US Department of Agriculture predicts Argentina's production will reach 39 million tonnes.
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