The weather has generally been good for the early planted corn in the core production regions, but less than adequate in the southern and western locations. Farmers in Argentina are making late changes and switching some of their intended corn acreage to soybeans instead out of fear of increased export taxes under the new administration that will take power on December 10th. In fact, the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange reduced their 2019/20 corn acreage this week by 100,000 hectares to 6.3 million hectares.
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The 2019/20 corn in Argentina was 45.7% planted late last week according to the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange. This represented an advance of 1.4% for the week and the corn planting is slower than average In the core production areas, the corn is 95% planted with 30-60% planted in southern Argentina and very little corn planted in far northern Argentina.
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The early corn is rated 0% very poor, 3.8% poor, 49.5% fair, 41.3% good, and 5.4% excellent, which is a slight improvement compared to last week. The soil moisture for the corn is rated 18.7 short to very short and 28.6 optimum to surplus, which was a dryer than last week. Approximately 2-3% of the early planted corn in Argentina has started to pollinate.
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The second phase of corn planting in Argentina will start in a few days and the corn planting will be completed sometime in January.