According to a Reuters investigation, the soybean sales They reach the lowest level in nine years. This is what correspondent Maximilian Heath expresses, where he states that producers take advantage of a window of dry weather after a rainy start to the year to advance the delayed tasks of soybean harvest that brought grain sales to their slowest pace in at least nine years.
Argentina is one of the two largest world exporters of soybean oil and meal, but the Rains higher than usual in recent months delayed the harvest of the oilseed in the 2023/24 cycle, close to 15 percentage points compared to the pace of recent years.
Due to discouraging weather and pricesUntil the beginning of May, producers had sold only 31.3% of a harvest expected at 49.7 million tons, the slowest marketing pace in more than nine years, according to official data.
Foreign exchange earnings from soybeans are essential for the Government, which needs them to sustain the value of the local currency in the midst of a prolonged financial crisis which years ago led to a strict restriction on the purchase of dollars.
Soy liquidation: what the official data say
According to the Bioeconomy Secretariatuntil Wednesday the farmers They had harvested 61% of the planted area with soybeans, 11 percentage points behind the previous cycle, whose harvest was barely 25 million tons, half of what was expected for the current campaign.
This delay, which is also due to the uncertainty regarding the quality of the grains due to excess water -which has added another brake to rural tasks- was transferred to oilseed sales.
“It has been a really very slow pace of commercialization, one of the slowest we have had in history,” said Dante Romano, researcher and professor at the Agribusiness Center of the Austral University, in Rosario, where the largest grain market operates. Argentina.
According to Romano, for the moment he has priced only 12% of what he estimates will be a 51 million ton productionbehind the average pace of 21%.
Soybean liquidation: the price factor
The reasons for the slowdown in soybean sales are not only climatic: A collapse in oilseed prices also contributed to the contraction in grain supplywhose exports of oil and flour represent Argentina’s largest source of income.
“The international market had a very strong fall and grain prices ended up going to the harvest position in Argentina at 270 dollars per ton, a point where the producer recorded losses, with which sales were completely paralyzed,” explained Romano. .
Late last year, when farmers were planting their plots of late soybeans, The July soybean contract on the local MATBA-ROFEX futures market, the reference price in Argentina, was trading at around $350 per ton.
Currently that same position is around 310 dollars and, according to analysts from the Rosario grain brokers Grassi SA and Enrique Zeni and CIA, who also find in the evolution of prices one of the factors of the slow pace of sales, in recent days there has been more commercial activity.
However, despite the improvement, this price still does not fully convince some producers who, for heavy losses in Brazil due to a historic flood, they believe that the price could rise further.
“Whoever has the option of being able to sell another product sells it. I occasionally make wheat, I make legumes, and today I am selling more wheat and legumes than soybeans. I try to spread the sales a little out of financial necessity, but it is still not very tempting to sell soybeans,” Farroni said.
“He who can hold out and wait for the sale, waits for it,” he said.
Source: Ambito
