BUENOS AIRES: The forecast for Argentina’s current corn crop could face yet another reduction, below the 36 million tonnes seen in a recent estimate, due to lingering impacts from a devastating drought, a key grains exchange said in a weekly report on Thursday.

The South American agricultural powerhouse is the world’s third-largest corn exporter. In the weekly crop report, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange (BdeC) pointed to lower-than-expected early corn yields in Cordoba, a major farming province, and warned it may again need to clip its estimate for the 2022/2023 harvest.

“If the trend continues, it could affect our projection,” the report stated. At the start of the harvesting season, the exchange estimated a total corn yield of 50 million tonnes.

Last week, BdeC signaled that it may also need to downwardly revise its soybean crop forecast for 2022/2023, currently at 22.5 million tonnes. Argentina is also a top global exporter of processed soybeans.

To date, the country’s corn harvest is nearly 20% complete compared to about 36% of the soybean crop, according to BdeC data. Beginning last year and extending into the first months of this year, the historic drought hit the most-productive farming areas hard. Government officials have described the dry conditions from last May through early March as the worst on record.