Ag Weather Forum

North-central Argentina provinces of Santa Fe and Cordoba have been on the dry side. The last time we were able to take a look at soil moisture analysis charts put out by the USDA Foreign Ag Service (now unavailable during the government shutdown), these two provinces were running short to very short. There was a lot of the color red in those two provinces. It was not looking good for corn planting, and led to some comments that corn acreage in Argentina would be reduced because of that shortage.

Rain the weekend of October 11-13 2013 may have changed that scenario. Indications are that these two provinces had rain of one-half to one and one-half inches, with isolated two to three-plus inche amounts. That's going to help the cause, at least for top-layer type moisture to get seeds germinated.

Less rain was noted in Buenos Aires and La Pampa provinces; however, these two provinces have done better in previous rain systems. In fact, the soil moisture analysis for Buenos Aires in the pre-government shutdown days had Buenos Aires at mostly adequate to surplus on its soil moisture.

With the Pacific Ocean in a "neutral" ENSO situation (neither El Nino or La Nina), we should see these periodic shower episodes continue to benefit the Argentina soil moisture supply.

Bryce

Twitter @BAndersonDTN

(ES/CZ)

© Copyright 2013 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.