Argentine Drought Knocks Forecast for Newly Planted Corn Crop

Argentina’s newly planted corn crop is being hit by drought and dry conditions, driving production forecasts lower. 

Click here to view Gro's Drought Index for Argentina

Argentine growers are expected to harvest 47 million tonnes of corn in 2020/21, according to the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange. That is lower than 2019/20 production of 50 million tonnes, and below the USDA’s latest forecast of 50 million tonnes. Corn sowing in Argentina, the world’s third-largest corn exporter, started in early September for harvest in April-May.

Gro will soon launch our Argentine Corn Yield Model. Like all of our machine-learning based yield models, our new Argentina model will update daily with yield forecasts at the district level and offer in-season, near-real-time yield analysis. 

Click here to view Gro's Argentina Corn Display

A second Argentine corn crop, which is planted in December-January and harvested in June-July, also could be affected if dry conditions persist. The current La Nina global climate event is creating dry conditions in many parts of the world, including the US, Brazil, and Argentina, even as it brings additional precipitation to other places, such as Australia. 

The vast majority of Argentina’s corn production area is experiencing varying levels of drought. The most affected regions are in the country’s north, especially Cordoba and Santa Fe provinces, which are important to Argentina's corn cultivation. 

Argentina’s very worst soybean and corn harvests occurred during previous La Nina events.The La Nina of 2010-2011 saw corn yields drop sharply for two years in a row. =

This insight was powered by the Gro platform, which enables better and faster decisions about factors affecting the entire global agricultural ecosystem. Gro organizes over 40,000 datasets from sources around the world into a unified ontology, which allows users to derive valuable insights such as this one. You can explore the data available on Gro with a free account, or please get in touch if you would like to learn more about a specific crop, region, or business issue.