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Buenos Aires – Argentina, the world’s second-largest corn exporter, could increase its grain export limit from 35 million tonnes to 35 million tonnes by 2021/22, an agriculture ministry source told Reuters on Thursday.
The South American country, deep in its corn collection, hoping to tackle inflation, had an export limit of 25 million tonnes in December for the current cycle, up from a cap of 41.6 million tonnes the previous season. This brought it to its current level in early May.
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“We are waiting for the late threshing of maize, which has finally been sown, in the hope that 35 million tonnes of grain will be approved for export,” the source said, with direct knowledge of the plan.
Argentina, the No. 1 exporter of processed soybeans and a major global player in wheat and beef, has been battling domestic food inflation as global warming has pushed up commodity prices due to the war in Ukraine.
The country’s 2021/22 grain crop, of which grain is not expected to be commercialized, is estimated at 57 million tonnes, official data shows. Harvesting is 44% complete. Buenos Aires grain exchange forecasts 49 million tons of corn production for commercial use.
Exporters have vowed to sell 27 million tonnes of maize till 2021/22, data from the Ministry of Agriculture shows.
According to the state statistics agency INDEC, Argentina exported about 40 million tonnes of maize last year, of which 1.5 million tonnes went to Vietnam, 1.2 million tonnes to South Korea and 697,000 tonnes to Egypt.
A ministry source said that with 2022/23 wheat, whose planting has just begun, about 8.5 million tonnes of 10 million tonnes of caps have been registered for export, a limit that could be a “fine tune” as the season progresses. . (Reporting by Maximilian Heath; Editing by Adam Jordan, David Gregorio and Margurita Choy)