Reuters – Heavy rainfall brought relief to Argentina’s main agricultural areas over the weekend of Jan. 15, interrupting several weeks of dry weather that led the Rosario grains exchange to trim its forecasts for both soybean and corn production.
German Heinzenknecht, meteorologist at the Applied Climatology Consultancy (CCA), said the weekend showers came as expected, reaching 15 to 60 millimetres in Argentina’s main Farm Belt on Saturday and Sunday.
“That is what we have been expecting,” Javier Dominguez, a farmer in the Buenos Aires province, told Reuters, saying the rainfall will help damaged soybean fields to recover and areas not yet sown to be planted.
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He added that late-planted corn also benefited from the showers, but noted they arrived too late for most of the early-planted corn.
The Rosario grains exchange earlier cut its projection for Argentina’s 2021-22 corn crop to 48 million tonnes from 56 million tonnes due to the recent heat wave, while the soybean crop was estimated at 40 million tonnes, down from a previous forecast of 45 million tonnes.
Heinzenknecht also expects these showers to mark a shift in Argentina’s rain pattern as the La Niña weather phenomenon subsides.
“It is obvious that there will be agricultural losses due to the drought, but these showers are interrupting it. If they had arrived a few days later, the outlook would have been completely different,” Dominguez said.
