Argentine government says 72.6% of 2021/22 soybean crop sold so far

Farmers in Argentina, the world’s top exporter of processed soy, have so far sold 72.6% of the 2021/22 soybean harvest, the agriculture ministry said on Wednesday, lagging the 75.6% sold at the same point a year ago.

Producers in Argentina sold 165,500 tonnes of the season’s soybeans in the week of Nov. 10-16, down from the 641,700 tonnes sold during the same period a year earlier. The 2021/22 soybean harvest was 44 million tonnes.

Soybean sales boomed to 13.3 million tonnes in September, driven by a temporary preferential exchange rate for producers, but have slowed since, leading the government to analyze bringing back the so-called “soy dollar” FX rate.

A prolonged drought this year has also stalled planting for the 2022/23 soybean crop, though recent rains have alleviated that to a degree. Rains, however, are still scarce across three-quarters of the country’s key Pampas farmland region.

The ministry said that Argentina had sold 5.7 million tonnes of its 2022/23 wheat harvest, or 42.4% of total production.

Last week, the government estimated that the 2022/23 wheat crop would be only 13.4 million tonnes due to the dry weather.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Belén Liotti Editing by Mark Potter)