La Nina, which is raising concerns over Argentina's corn and soya crops, could hit the South American country again next season and cause even worse damage to yields, a climate specialist said on Tuesday. Argentina is one of the world's leading exporters of soya and corn, but dry weather linked to the La Nina climate event is fueling concerns that yields could suffer - especially as corn plants enter key development stages.
Eduardo Sierra, a climate adviser for Buenos Aires Grains Exchange, said La Nina would likely reduce soya yields by at least 15 percent before starting to fade out in April. However, he warned that the phenomenon could return next season when depleted soil moisture reserves could make its impact even more damaging. Two consecutive La Ninas caused sharp crop losses in Argentina in the 2008/09 harvest. "There are already forecasts for La Nina to return next year, it looks about 50-50," said Sierra, an agricultural climatology professor at the University of Buenos Aires.
He said both La Nina and El Nino have appeared twice as often the last decade, raising the statistical probabilities that another La Nina could start to affect local weather patterns from May 2011 with a "much worse" impact. "There's never been El Nino-El Nino, but we've seen La Nina-La Nina in recent years. Most forecasts coincide in predicting a dry (southern hemisphere) autumn and some also expected the spring to be dry. That's how it was in 2008/09," Sierra said.
La Nina features colder-than-normal waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, while El Nino is an abnormal warming of those waters. La Nina tends to cause droughts in Argentina, southern Brazil and neighbouring Uruguay. "The current sequence seems to be El Nino, in the 2006/07 cycle, followed by La Nina in 2007/08, which we didn't notice much because it came after a period of good rains. But with the second La Nina in 2008/09, it reduced corn yields by 40 percent and soya yields by 33 percent," Sierra said.
Argentine soya production shrank to just 31 million tonnes in the 2008/09 harvest, rebounding to a record 52.7 million tonnes last season due to plentiful rains. The country's agriculture minister has forecast 2010/11 production of 52 million tonnes, but some analysts have already started to lower their forecasts because of the current dry conditions in the main crop belt.
Argentine farmers are continuing to sow corn and soya, although the dry weather is slowing plantings and raising concerns about the development of young crops, especially corn, which is further advanced and starting to enter reproductive phases when yields are defined.
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