Paraguay Eyes Record Soy Crop
Soybean planting in Paraguay begins at the end of this month, and farmers there are hoping to recoup losses from last season's drought-ravaged crop by producing a record 7 MMT of soybeans in 2010.
“2009 was a lost year for agriculture but we are beginning a new season at the end of the month and results for 2010 could be very promising. Apparently we are going to have abundant rainfall because of El Niño, and international prices are not optimal but there are not bad either”, said Agronomist Hector Cristaldo, president of the Production Unions UGP told MercoPress.com.
For this coming season “we expect the area to be planted with soybean to remain unchanged or slightly increased, that is from 2.5 million hectares to possible 2.7 million, which means that with an average yield of 2.600 kilos per hectare, we can again be well above the six million tons threshold, maybe even a record seven million tons, following the four million of this last season," he said.
Paraguay's record soybean harvest to date was the 6.9 MMT produced in 2007/08, according to the USDA. On Friday they forecast production in South America's third largest producer at 5.75 MMT for 2010.
Don't you just know that the poor little Paraguayans will be crying in their Pilsen beer next harvest when they discover that their bigger neighbours in Argentina and Brazil have both had the same bright idea simultaneously.
With record production in the US being followed by potential records in all three major producing nations in South America, demand from China needs to remain strong, as that is the only thing propping this entire market up.
Invasion Of The Three Headed Soybean Monster
Here's a highly interesting and thought provoking article on Paraguay, the world’s fourth-largest exporter of soybeans, where the invasion of the three-headed soybean monster is raping the land.
Here almost 100,000 campesinos (peasant farmers) have been evicted from their land as the multi-national conglomerates move into town to grow soybeans.
In a country where 83 percent of campesinos occupy only 6 percent of the land, forty percent of all property is possessed by just 351 owners of large estates.
Those that resist face serious consequences. More than a hundred campesino leaders have been assassinated, and more than two thousand others have faced trumped-up charges for their resistance to the intrusion of agribusiness.
Get off your land
The Peasants Are Revolting
Paraguay's government sent dozens of extra police on Friday to a poor rural region where peasant farmers demanding land redistribution have threatened to invade Brazilian-owned ranches.
Tensions have risen in the Paraguayan countryside since President Fernando Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop, took office in August, vowing to make land reform a priority for his center-left administration.
Interior Minister Rafael Filizzola said 100 extra police would be sent to patrol the impoverished central province of San Pedro, a focus of tension between landless peasants and wealthy landowners, some of whom are from neighboring Brazil.
"We're going to increase the presence of the police and the state in an area where threats are being reported at the moment," Filizzola told reporters.
In San Pedro, where Lugo served as bishop for more than 10 years, militant peasants vowed on Wednesday to launch a wave of invasions of Brazilian-owned farms in the area next week to press their demands for land.
Government ministers have said any land reform program will respect private property and have warned that anyone involved in farm occupations will be prosecuted.
Peasant farmers' demands for land have increased since a soy-farming boom gathered pace five years ago in Paraguay, the world's fourth-biggest soy exporter.
