A record wheat crop in Argentina is spurring a logistics frenzy to get harvests to grain terminals and helping to keep global prices at around multi-year lows.
With fieldwork in full swing, production is seen at 25.5 million metric tons, the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange confirmed on Thursday, easily the most in data going back to the start of the century.
As a result, farmers’ truck deliveries to Argentina’s river shipment hub in Rosario were a record in November, notching almost two million metric tons, double the average of recent years, the city’s board of trade said in a Friday report.
That’s driven prices paid to the farmers in Argentina to an eight-year low, compounded by discounts for poor protein levels, Rosario said. For global buyers, Argentina free-on-board prices, at US$206 a ton for January delivery, according to Commodity3, are cheaper than many rivals, including the US, Australia, Russia and France.
Despite low prices which the Argentine glut is exacerbating, proceeds from exports that could reach 16 million metric tons are seen at US$3.5 billion, the second-most on record, Bruno Ferrari, an analyst at Rosario bourse, said in an interview. That will help efforts by the government of Javier Milei to stabilise the peso.
by Jonathan Gilbert, Bloomberg
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