European corn struggles in heat, prompting bigger imports
Business Mirror
Scorching temperatures are hurting the European Union’s corn crops, putting the bloc on track for its largest imports in three seasons.
Temperatures in the week to August 16 rose as much as 9 degrees Celcius above normal in northern Spain and southern France, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The heat has dimmed prospects for both quality and yields.
The share of French corn rated in good to excellent condition fell to 62 percent in the week to August 18, crops office FranceAgriMer said Friday, well below last year’s figure. Dry weather is also hurting crops in Bulgaria, where corn and sunflower yields may drop to their lowest in decades.
Buyers are likely to offset any potential crop shortfalls with cheap and plentiful supplies from other regions. Expectations of bumper harvests in Brazil and the US have weighed on prices, sending Chicago corn futures to an almost 12-month low earlier in August.
Paris corn futures rose as much as 0.8 percent to the highest in more than a week on Friday, before paring gains.
Corn from both Brazil and the US is “pricing very competitively on the global market, which is encouraging import demand,” said Matt Darragh, a grains and oilseed analyst at Kpler. “Corn production in the EU is coming under a bit of stress, so this is likely to support corn imports too.”
The EU is expected to import 21 million tons of corn in the 2025-26 season, according to a forecast by the International Grains Council. That would make the bloc the world’s second-largest buyer for a second straight year, as China—typically a strong purchaser of the feed grain—faces weaker demand.
European crop harvests are expected to accelerate heading into the fall, with cooler, wetter weather forecast in the coming days.
“Rain in south central areas should continue to replenish moisture for late growth of corn and sunflowers,” said Vaisala meteorologist Donald Keeney. “However, dryness will continue across UK, northern Germany, southern Romania, Bulgaria and Spain.”
Indonesia’s modern farms
Indonesia’s state agriculture firm Agrinas Pangan Nusantara (Persero) is proposing to turn idle land owned by the army into modern farms at a cost of 870 billion rupiah ($53 million) in a bid to jumpstart the national food estate program.
It plans to use the funds to develop the first state-owned modern farm, spanning 12,000 hectares in Baturaja, South Sumatra, said outgoing President Director Joao Angelo de Sousa Mota in an interview on Thursday. Agrinas has yet to receive funding approval from its main shareholder Danantara Indonesia, Mota said.
The initiative could revive the government’s stalled food estate program and support President Prabowo Subianto’s goal of achieving food self-sufficiency in the nation where 280 million people consume around 30 million tons of rice annually.
Still, bureaucratic hurdles may pose a challenge to its execution, which, according to Mota, contributed to his decision to resign after just six months leading the company. A shareholders meeting is scheduled for next week to decide on his resignation.
Agrinas’s proposal follows Prabowo’s instruction to his ministers, including the Defense Minister, to coordinate efforts to develop food security regions in provinces including South Papua, Central Kalimantan, South Sumatra and South Kalimantan.
Mota said the move would help the company avoid land acquisition issues that have plagued large infrastructure projects in Indonesia. If successful, the Baturaja farm could serve as a model for replication in other locations, including Kalimantan. Agrinas has a target of managing over 400,000 hectares of rice fields this year, he added.
The latest initiative echoes Indonesia’s past efforts to achieve food self-sufficiency, including a failed attempt in the 1990s to convert one million hectares of peat land into rice fields in Kalimantan.
To Read more about Maize News continue reading Agriinsite.com
Source : Business Mirror
