Flooding in the northern part of Argentina’s farm belt will reduce the country’s 2014-15 soybean production by one million to 2.5 million tonnes, experts said on Friday as growers started assessing damage done by heavy February and early March rains.

Flood waters in Cordoba, Santa Fe and Santiago del Estero provinces have receded in recent days thanks to dry weather, allowing farmers to enter affected areas to take measurements.

The government expects a record crop of 58 million tonnes, the same estimate made by local consultancy Agripac before cutting its forecast to 55.5 million tonnes. The flood damage would reduce the crop by 1.7 percent to 4.5 percent.

“I think (1.5 million acres) will be lost to the floods, equal to 2.5 million tonnes,” said Agripac chief analyst Pablo Adreani. “The losses are in low- and medium-low lying areas.”

Meteorologist German Heinzenknecht of the Applied Climatology consultancy estimated that 1.2 million acres of soy had been damaged by the floods. He said conditions will improve over the days ahead thanks to forecasted sunny weather.

The Agriculture Ministry said in its weekly report it also expected dry, hot conditions in the northern farm belt will help dry up waterlogged fields over the coming week.

The area hardest hit is north-central Cordoba, Argentina’s No. 2 farm province. Cordoba got 300 millimetres of rain last month, the most for the month since 1960.

“The impact of the excessive water will be seen in yield loss and losses in harvestable area,” said analyst Gustavo Lopez of Agritrend. “Preliminarily, I estimate the losses at one million tonnes.”

Earlier this month, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said it would probably cut its 2014-15 soybean harvest estimate of 57 million tonnes once damage from the flooding is factored in.

The season’s crop estimates vary from one analyst to another, but all forecasts are above the record 53.4 million tonnes of soy collected in the 2013-14 season.

Source - http://www.producer.com/