First modification:
Argentina, the world’s largest producer and exporter of cereals, is suffering from a historic drought that has severely affected its harvests this year. This is the case, in particular, of corn, whose production forecasts are constantly revised downwards.
With the RFI correspondent in Buenos Aires, Théo Conscience.
In its latest report, the Rosario Stock Exchange forecasts a production of 35 million tons of corn for this year, when at the beginning of the campaign it forecast 50 million tons.
Lack of rain and aridity of the soil
The lack of rain and the aridity of the soil have delayed planting, when they have not completely prevented it. In the core zone, the productive heart of the country, it has rained approximately half of the usual this year, while the water tables were already in the red.
In fact, the drought has lasted for three years in this region, due to the exceptional persistence of La Niña, a climatic phenomenon that causes rainfall deficits in the Argentine plains. In the fields, corn cobs are stunted, shriveled and yellow from lack of water, and production is forecast to drop 30% from last year.
Although Argentina was the third largest corn exporter in the world in 2022, the impact of this drop in production on international prices was offset, among other things, by the very good harvest in neighboring Brazil.
“It’s almost a tragedy”
But for Argentina, the losses are real and all the more significant since they are not limited to corn. In addition to the drought, the country experienced the hottest summer in its history. The record temperatures also had a big impact on crops.
“Argentina this facing a drought very important, it that did a deterioration about the production and the harvest of grain in general, and has a impact very strong. We are talking of that Argentina goes to lose near of the 35% of his harvest and goes to have a impact half in Dollars superior to twenty thousand millions of dollars”, explained to RFI the economist Ramiro Castiñeira, director of Econometrica.
“For Argentina in particular, is almost a tragedy. He GDP already HE esteem that goes to fall between 3 to 4% by he impact of the harvest. AND after, the typical and own inflation of Argentina that always HE overflows. Is say, he last fact was 102% YoY and the projections point to that reaches 140% for this year”, emphasizes Castiñeira.
At 11.5 million tons, wheat production was half that of the previous year. As for soybeans, the Rosario Stock Exchange forecasts the worst harvest in more than 20 years, with 27 million tons, despite the fact that Argentina is the world’s largest exporter of soybean oil and meal.
