Argentina's early corn crop condition drops, recent rain to support late crop

Some 28% of Argentina's corn crop was in good condition as of Feb. 2, down from 32% a week earlier, the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange said.

Most of the crop in a poor condition was early-planted corn, while rain late January and early February will support the growth of late-planted crops, BAGE said.

The 2021-22 corn crop will be marketed from March 2022 to February 2023.

While the recent rain has brightened the crop yield prospect for late-planted corn crop, more rain will be needed in February for the crops to realize their full yield potential.

Meanwhile, the weather forecast for Argentina in the coming days was not entirely favorable for corn crops.

Soil moisture has begun to decline again and will likely drop further over the next 10 days to fall back below normal levels, Maxar forecast in its daily weather report Feb. 3.

"The big question now is whether the rain in late January was timely enough to significantly boost crop yields," the weather report said.

In Argentina, corn planting is almost complete, covering 99.1% of the total forecast area of 7.3 million hectares as of Feb. 2, BAGE report showed.

In Argentina, early corn is usually planted September-October and harvested April-May, while the late corn crop is sown December-January and harvested June-July.

Amid the uncertainty over the size of the corn crop in Argentina, weekly crop sales by producers was subdued, agriculture ministry data showed.

Weekly corn sales by producers were around 230,000 mt for the week ended Jan. 26, while they totaled more than 1 million mt in December.

Farmers in the country have already marketed 14.867 million mt of 2021-22 corn as of Jan. 26, compared with 14.624 million mt a year ago, agriculture ministry data showed.

Argentina is one of the top three corn exporters in the world.