RAINS BEGIN IN MEXICO BUT IS IT TOO LATE?

August 20, 2019
Posted in: News

Over the past few weeks we have been reporting on dry conditions in Mexican dry bean country and offering projections about the potential impact on this years’ production levels. As the lack of rain occurred during a critical time in the planting process, most reporting, combined with the observations of our own agronomist, make it increasingly certain that lack of planting, late planting, and late rains will all affect production levels.

Dry conditions persist in Mexico

While we can report that there is now some precipitation in the last few days in the states of Zacatecas, Durango Chihuahua, San Luis Potosi and Guanajuato, the beans planted, were planted late and in dry soil. Some producers planted beans as late as the second week of August and others decided to plant oats and barley instead. This will reduce the bean planted area in this cycle. Preliminary information from our agronomist indicates that only 798 thousand of the total programmed surfaces of 1,465,459 hectares were planted this cycle in all of Mexico. This is 42.1% less than in 2018. Mexican government forecasts suggest that precipitation will be below the historic average in most of Mexico for the month of August, with the exception of the states of Durango, Zacatecas and Guanajuato. They also estimate that in September, there will be precipitation recovery in most of the country however, still under the historic average in the state of Chihuahua.   While it is still early to forecast production levels, we will be presenting our preliminary projections at the end of this month with our annual Planting Projection report.