Country News
Brazil: Truckers in the corn producing hub of Mato Grosso limited the flow of traffic leading to the state’s ports on Wednesday in order to protest a recent increase in fuel prices, according to Reuters.
Russia/Ukraine: French seed group,Vilmorin (the world’s fourth largest seed producer) has announced that its sales to Ukraine and Russia will likely fall this year due to the increasingly dire financial situation in those countries, according to Reuters. Inability to secure bank loans and the decrease in value of local currencies has left Russian and Ukrainian farmers incapable of purchasing expensive imported commercial seed. UkrAgorConsult estimates that Ukraine could be forced to reduce its corn planting area by 7 percent this year. Vilmorin saw sales in 2013/14 of $91 million for corn and sunflower seed to Russia and Ukraine.
South Africa: South Africa’s 2015 corn crop may be its smallest since 2011 due to persistently hot and dry weather, reports Bloomberg News. Farmers could bring in 10.5 MMT this year, while harvest totals in 2011 were 10.4 MMT. This stands in comparison to the 2014 corn crop of 14.25 MMT, which was South Africa’s largest in 33 years. Free State and North West provinces (which produced 64 percent of the 2014 crop) have seen insufficient rain so far, and would require 20 millimeters of rain by the weekend for the crop to recover.