Reading Time: 2 minutes Buenos Aires | Reuters –– Argentina will create a 2.5 billion-peso (C$360 million) stimulus fund for small and medium-scale grains producers which will be funded by existing taxes on the exports of large farms, Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said on Monday. Kicillof said small-scale farmers of soy, wheat, and corn had struggled with a 30 […] Read more
Argentina creates grains stimulus fund in election year
Argentina says ‘worried’ about flooded soy fields
Reading Time: < 1 minute Buenos Aires | Reuters — Flooding in some of the soy-growing areas of Cordoba, Entre Rios and Santa Fe provinces has become “worrying” to the government as farmers get ready to start harvesting the 2014-15 crop, the agriculture ministry said in its weekly report on Friday. The northern part of the Pampas grains belt has […] Read more
Floods in Argentina expected to cause soy crop losses
Reading Time: < 1 minute Buenos Aires | Reuters –– Some of Argentina’s northern soy-growing areas were flooded by heavy rains in the past week, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said Thursday, warning that it may lower its 57 million-tonne 2014-15 harvest forecast in the coming weeks. The country is the world’s No. 3 soybean exporter and top supplier of […] Read more
Argentine farmers to halt crop sales for three days in protest
Reading Time: 2 minutes Buenos Aires | Reuters –– Argentine farmers will suspend grain sales for three days to protest export quotas and other government policies they say hurt profits, the country’s main growers’ organizations said Tuesday. The strike will start on Wednesday, March 11, leaders of three of Argentina’s biggest farm groups told a press conference. “This action […] Read more
Argentina tracks soy hoarding by registering silo bag sales
Reading Time: 2 minutes Buenos Aires | Reuters — Argentina will keep an eye on how much soy is being hoarded on farms throughout the country by requiring that the sales of silo bags be reported to tax authorities, according to a government resolution announced Monday. The oblong industrial-strength plastic bags have come to dot the Pampas grains belt […] Read more
Optimism for Canada to plant 100K acres to sunflowers
Reading Time: 2 minutes CNS Canada — Wet weather may have cost western Canadian producers 20,000 acres of sunflowers last year, according to one industry watcher who’s hopeful 2015 will be a little kinder. “We were anticipating over 100,000 acres last year and as it turned out we came into that 80,000 range,” said Ben Friesen, purchasing manager for […] Read more
Argentina to restrict wheat export permits if low prices paid
Reading Time: < 1 minute Buenos Aires | Reuters –– Wheat exporters who buy the grain from Argentina’s farmers will not be issued permits if they pay the growers significantly less than the international price for the crop, the government said Friday. The announcement, by Economy Minister Axel Kicillof, followed complaints by local producers that government restrictions on wheat exports […] Read more
Argentina’s ‘Soy King’ abdicates in favor of biotech
Reading Time: 2 minutes Buenos Aires | Reuters –– The company that led the breakneck expansion of Argentine soy cultivation over the last two decades has quietly reduced the area it farms by more than half as inflation, trade restrictions and high taxes drain growers’ profits. Los Grobo, once known as the South American country’s “King of Soy” has […] Read more
Argentina denounces farmer soy hoarding, says hurts state income
Reading Time: 2 minutes Buenos Aires | Reuters — Argentine growers hoarding soybeans to protect themselves from inflation are hurting both state and farm income in the world’s No. 3 exporter of the oilseed, a top government official said Thursday. The South American country pioneered the use of plastic horizontal silos to stockpile grains. Growers are hanging onto soybeans, […] Read more
Striking port workers in Argentine grains hub halt shipping
Reading Time: < 1 minute Buenos Aires | Reuters — Port workers in part of the Argentine grain hub of Rosario went on strike on Thursday to demand a year-end bonus, paralyzing ship movements, said the head of the powerful CGT union’s local branch. Wage increases are lagging behind Argentina’s soaring inflation rate, which some private economists estimate is around […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
