This soybean harvest was the worst of the last decade | Chronic

The last soybean crop finished with a total production of 36 million tonnes, reflecting a 37.4% year-on-year decline, causing a loss of approximately $ 4,200 million and representing the worst campaign in the last ten years, after another drought, that of the period 2008-2009, has resulted in the collection of 32 million tons, according to the Panorama of the grain exchange of Buenos Aires.

The soybean harvest has ended on an area of ​​18 million hectares, the report said, adding that the crop showed losses of 1.2 million hectares planted and a national yield of 2,140 kilos per hectare, 33% below the end of the previous cycle, which was 3,190 kilos per average hectare.

In this campaign, national average yields reflected the absence of rainfall during critical moments in the phenological cycle that made the initial estimates of 54 million tonnes of oilseeds impossible.

According to the estimates of the Institute of Economic Studies of the Grain Exchange, the gross product of the soybean chain will be 26% lower in 2018 with respect to the level that would have been achieved if expectations at the beginning of the agricultural cycle were met, rising from $ 16.213 million in the initial scenario to $ 12.010 million in the drought.

Therefore, according to the data, of the economy as a whole, the decrease of $ 4,200 million in the value added of the soya chain represents a 0.6% decrease in Argentine GDP for 2018 estimated by the IMF.

Import

Last Thursday, the first shipment of soybeans from the United States in two decades arrived at the port of Rosario, with nearly 30,000 tons of cereals. It was acquired by the Vicentin crushing plant in San Lorenzo.

The vessel had left the Gulf of Mexico and was acquired as part of the drought that affected this season's harvest. It is estimated that Argentina will buy about 600,000 tons of soybeans this year to cope with the slowdown campaign. The last US soybean import was in 1998, with 118,000 tonnes.

This year's drought has left Argentinian processing plants without adequate raw materials, whose capacity has recently increased and is one of the most efficient in the world. Vicentín must provide crushing facilities that the drought has left without product. The cereal converts the bean into flour or oil, with which they get greater value from selling abroad.