Winter crops defeated weather and reached a record harvest

(Photo. A combine harvesting wheat in 25 de Mayo, in the Central Pampas. Credit Fernando Meoli)

Buenos Aires, January 18th. The Buenos Aires Grain Exchange (BCBA) confirmed that Argentine farmers obtained a 19 MMT record wheat harvest, plus a good barley harvest of 4.1 million metric tons. This volumes surpassed the previous ones by 7% and 17% respectively.

The BCBA explained that despite the frosts and heavy rains on the latest stages of the wheat crops, it was possible to reach a new record harvest, even though the initial estimations rounded 19.7 million metric tons.

Now, it hopes that about 3,900 millions dollars enters to the country thanks to barley and wheat exports, one third more than during 2017/18 season. Only during December 2018 it was embarked 2.2 MMT of wheat, and it hopes that 12.8 million tons of wheat will exported during the current commercial season.

But the Government will be one of the largest winners of this cereal boom. Thanks to the re-imposing of export tax and other duties, National Administration will collect one billion dollars, increasing the fiscal pressure to 25% of the Wheat Gross Product.

The BCBA stressed that there are a huge dynamism in the markets. To now, both industries and exporters bought 53% of the wheat production versus 48% last year and 51% of the barley production versus 31 percent.