Argentina is likely to harvest 50.50 million tonnes of soyabeans in early 2009, up from 47.50 million tonnes in early 2008, Hamburg-based oilseeds analysts Oil World forecast on Tuesday. "In Argentina, soyabeans are likely to be the winners in plantings for the 2008/09 season as their acreage will be expanded sharply at the expense of wheat, corn, sorghum and sunflower," it said.
It now forecasts Argentine farmers will plant 17.85 million hectares of soyabeans for harvesting in early 2009, up from 16.94 million ha harvested earlier this year. It regards the official Argentine estimate of 16.5 million hectares as not yet reflecting full planting developments.
But plantings could be affected by the dispute about Argentina's export restrictions on agricultural products, which is still not completely resolved, Oil World said. The farmers' strike which ended in June against the government's export restrictions has not reduced commercial soyabean stocks as much as expected, but large unsold volumes are thought to still be on farms, it said.
"We estimate total Argentine soyabean stocks at 26.5 million tonnes as of end August 2008," it said. "This is lower than expected and down by 600,000 tones from last year." But it estimated Argentine farmers still had 15.5 to 16 million tonnes of unsold on-farm soyabean stocks at the end of July, up from only 3.2 to 3.7 million tonnes in July 2007.
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