South America: More rain falls across key barley regions as harvest advances

More rain has fallen across all key barley regions of South America, from Chile to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, as harvest advances and rolls further southward. The heavy rains received in Brazil and Uruguay were on top of earlier dryness, leaving some quality variability and impacting selection rates. Argentina’s harvest begins in earnest over the next 10-15 days and although no more rain is needed at this stage, the forecast for the next week shows more rain is coming, RMI Analytics said in their latest report on December 5.

The rain is a concern for farmers as they want to move through harvest quickly, in order to get soybeans planted as early as possible. Temperatures are cooler which helps avoid quality issues but does slow the drying of fields for harvest.

From a production standpoint, RMI’s barley crop forecst for Argentina remains at 5.2 mln tonnes, remaining in alignment with local estimates.

The analysts’ export estimate has increased slightly on the news that Russia is ceasing barley exports effective Feb. 15th, which could open up additional feed barley demand for Argentina.