BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) — Dry weekend weather in Argentina’s Pampas grains belt further delayed corn planting, although ample showers are expected to speed seedings over the days ahead, a local meteorologist said on Monday.
Prime corn planting season in Argentina — the world’s No. 3 exporter of the grain — is from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, but relatively little corn has gone into the ground so far this year as growers wait for rains needed to soften soils before seeding.
“Between Wednesday and Friday we expect significant rainfall for the northern agricultural region, which will complement the light and scattered rains we’ve seen so far,” said Stella Carballo, climatologist at the government’s Weather and Water Institute.
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“If it rains as expected it will improve the planting outlook,” she added.
Argentine farmers are expected to seed 3.46 million hectares of 2013-14 corn, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said last week, paring its previous estimate of 8.8 million acres due to dry conditions.
The northern reaches of Argentina’s corn belt — in Santa Fe and Cordoba provinces — have remained especially dry this year.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture sees a 2013-14 Argentine corn crop of 26 million tonnes, marked down from a previous estimate of 28 million due to bad weather.
