Rain over the weekend in drought-hit areas of Argentina's farm belt helped growers plant soya in fields that had been at risk of staying barren this season, Natalia Gattinoni, weather expert with the INTA national climate institute, said on Monday. Farmers have been worried that excessively dry conditions in the northern part of the bread-basket province of Buenos Aires would persist, blocking them from planting soya in some areas.
"In the central and northern part of the country there were wide but inconsistent rains. Some areas got an important amount of rain while others did not," Gattinoni said. For example, parts of Cordoba province and the key area Junin in northern Buenos Aires got more than 50 millimeters of rain, she added.
Growers further south were not as lucky, but southern Buenos Aires province was not as hard hit by drought. "It rained quite a bit in the northern part of the country over the weekend. It did not rain here but we had already planted all the soya we planned to sow," said Fernando Meoli, a farmer in 9 de Julio and 25 de Mayo in the southern part of Argentina's main Pampas farm belt.
Meoli said his area got 20 millimeters of rain during the previous weekend, which allowed him to finish sowing last week. He says the region's soya plants will be in a delicate stage of development early next month, requiring more ground moisture.
"The key to getting good soya yields will be how much rain falls in the first ten days of February. If we don't get good rains, there will be a big impact on soya yields," Meoli said. Argentine farmers will harvest 52 million tonnes of soya in the 2017/18 season, the Rosario grains exchange said last week, citing drought as its reason for cutting its previous forecast of 54.5 million tonnes.
Argentine soya planting starts around mid-October and usually extends only into the first week of January. The later soya is sown, the higher the risk that early frosts will kill the crop before the May and June harvest months. The Buenos Aires Grains Exchange on Thursday cut its 2017/18 soya planting area estimate to 18 million hectares from a previous 18.1 million, citing dryness in Buenos Aires.
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