Country News
Argentina: The Rosario Board of Trade (BCR) predicts that the key corn production area will hit a record this year. However, poor demand is slamming premiums right now. (AgriCensus)
South Africa: Corn is being imported, including from Ethiopia, but the future is more hopeful. The weather has switched from excessive dryness to above normal rainfall in the main planting areas, easing concerns about a disastrous crop. The Crop Estimates Committee has only trimmed the production area forecast by 200,000 hectares to 2.2 million. With more area planted, attention now turns to eventual yields. Current optimism suggests that the country will be neither an exporter nor an importer in 2019/20. (Reuters; AgriCensus)
South Korea: KFA has now made three tenders for corn and has passed on all three because of disappointment in the offers. (AgriCensus)
Tunisia: The government buying agency is tendering for barley. (AgriCensus)
Ukraine: Corn exporters are hoping to exploit a rare opening of the India import market. (AgriCensus)
Zimbabwe: The economy is imploding as a shortage of cash runs headlong into a drought-induced food shortage. Corn imports have been increasingly necessary since the government instituted a land reform policy in 2000. (Bloomberg)