Argentine farmers have brought in 86.7 percent of land planted with soyabeans this season, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said on Thursday, adding 8 percentage points during the week but lagging last year's harvesting tempo by 9.9 percentage points due to rains. Harsh early April storms wrecked the crop in parts of southern Cordoba, Santa Fe and Entre Rios provinces, leaving other areas too wet to be harvested on schedule. While those areas are drying up enough to harvest, parts of the bread-basket province of Buenos Aires were hit hard by showers.
"During the last seven days it continued to rain in wide parts of southern Buenos Aires province," the exchange said in its weekly crop report. "These rains interrupted harvesting mainly in south-east Buenos Aires, where collection is down 48.8 percent year on year," it said, leaving it 2015-16 overall crop forecast unchanged at 56 million tonnes.
The forecast had been at 60 million tonnes before the April drenching forced farmers in parts of Cordoba, Entre Rios and Santa Fe to park their harvesting machines and wait for better weather. The exchange left its 2016-17 wheat planting area forecast unchanged at 4.5 million hectares and its 2015-16 corn crop estimate at 25 million tonnes.