Argentina soybean planting hits 19.9% as corn lags: BAGE

Argentinian farmers progressed at a brisk pace with soybean planting last week, hitting 19.9% of the projected area versus just 4% a week earlier in a move that narrowed the gap with last year to just 0.2 percentage points, the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange (BAGE) said in its weekly report Thursday.

But corn planting only progressed by 0.3 percentage points during the week, with 31.2% of the projected 6.3 million ha area now seeded, a lag of 13.1 percentage points versus the same period last year.

New rainfall in the coming weeks should speed up the pace.

Soybean planting was able to gain traction in core areas of the centre and south of the main growing areas owing to god moisture content in the soil, with a large 2.7 million ha of the projected 17.2 million ha area seeded in the week.

But like corn, some areas in the east of the growing area such as Entre Rios proved harder to seed owing to drier conditions.

Moving onto wheat, the dry weather that hampered corn planting and to a lesser extent soybean planting proved a boon for the harvest, with 15.5% of the projected area now collected.

This up 6.7 percentage points on the week and maintains a 2.1 point lead over progress that had been made by the same time last year.