By Leonardo Gottems, reporter for AgroPages 

The Buenos Aires Cereal Exchange revealed its estimates for production and investments for the 2017-2018 grain crop season in Argentina. 

The Exchange has forecast that soybeans will be the crop with the lowest investment during the period because of the remaining export taxes on that crop. However, crop management for that specific crop would still be robust.

The investments in professional seed treatment for soybeans would increase between 4 percent and 7 percent during the period. The use of soybeans that are resistant to insects would rise between 7 percent and 18 percent, while the investment in Sulfonylureas would jump between 7 percent and 18 percent. Total seed investment in oilseed would rise 4 percent with 68 kilograms of seeds per hectare or US$ 1.16 billion.

The use of fertilizers for soybeans in the new season in Argentina would jump 4 percent to 2.8 million metric tons as the use of fungicides is estimated to rise by 4 percent with an improvement in the technology used.

By comparison with some other crops, the investments in soybeans are small. The use of the concentrated seed of sorghum, for instance, has increased from 17 percent of the total in 2010 to be the expected 83 percent of the total in 2018. For sunflower, there was an inversion from 45 percent of the total in 2010 to 68 percent of the total crop planted in 2018.

Overall, the production estimates are 3.6 million metric tons for sunflower, 3.1 million metric tons for sorghum, 41 million metric tons for corn, 19.9 million metric tons for wheat, 17 million metric tons for barley, and 54 million metric tons for soybeans.

These estimates were already calculated using the new estimate system of the Buenos Aires Cereal Exchange, which uses satellite images with other data coming from the University of Maryland and the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The data will cover 90 percent of Argentina’s agricultural surface and a long-term goal is to release crop estimates every week. The Buenos Aires Cereal Exchange now claims to have the most precise estimation method in Latin America.

Source:        AgroNews