Argentine Wheat Crop May Fall To 6MMT - Exchange

The Argentine wheat crop may fall to 6 MMT this year, from 8.3 MMT last season say the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange, according to a report on Bloomberg (here).

That would be a huge reduction of almost two-thirds the production of just a couple of years ago, and potentially relegate Argentina to the role of a bit-part in international wheat trade in 2009/10.

And even this estimate looks ambitious.

Two thirds of the way through the optimal planting window of May/July, Argentine farmers had got just 923,000 hectares of wheat into the ground, according to the Exchange last week.

Yields last season averaged just 2 MT/hectare, even in the bumper year of 2007/08 they only managed 2.92 MT/hectare.