Soy-Shipping Turmoil Deepens With Argentine Minister’s Death
By Jonathan Gilbert (Bloomberg)
Argentine farmers struggling to ship their crops through increasingly shallow rivers may soon face a new obstacle: One of the world’s key soy waterways needs to be dredged, and there’s no firm plan for who will do it.
The government in agricultural powerhouse Argentina has had months even years to draft the terms of a tender to dredge the Parana River, the source of most of the world’s soy meal for livestock feed and soy oil for cooking and biofuels. But companies eying the new multiyear contract are still in the dark and, compounding the uncertainty, the man in charge of what exactly is up for grabs, ex-Transport Minister Mario Meoni, died in a car crash last week.
River Waterways Drying Up In South America
Early every morning I get the Van Trump Report emailed to me. The cost is very reasonable and it provides a lot of information on the grain and livestock markets, weather, outside markets and some fun articles too. There was one news story that caught my attention, Waterways Drying Up in South America Crop-Shipping Hubs. Talking with Gordy on the air he has mentioned for quite some time that the weather in South America was dryer than normal. Just in the last month the market seems to have noticed too!
Brazil and Argentina are huge countries. They do not have the roads, bridges and railroads we do. They rely rely on barges on the 3,000 mile long Parana River to haul corn and beans to the coast. Plus those barges haul inputs that farmers need back to the interior of the countries. The water level is so low that barges have run aground so they are now carrying less than their normal load. Logjams are forming at the river ports.
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Waterways Are Drying Up in Key South American Crop-Shipping Hubs
Bloomberg 3 hrs ago Fabiana Batista and Jonathan Gilbert
(Bloomberg) The South American drought that’s helping push corn and soybean prices to multiyear highs isn’t just threatening crops, but also the ability to haul them on waterways that are drying up.
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On the increasingly shallow rivers that flow through top producers Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, barges are carrying less than their usual load. The situation is so desperate in Paraguay that the country is asking neighboring Brazil to release water from the giant Itaipu hydroelectric dam, after vessels have run aground and logjams are forming in river ports because barges can’t move. In a key Argentine leg of the 4,900-kilometer (3,000-mile) Parana River, uncertainty over dredging work could make it even harder for farmers to ship their harvests.
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The South American drought that’s helping push Wheat, Corn, and Soybean prices to multiyear highs isn’t just threatening crops, but also the ability to haul them on waterways that are drying up.
On the increasingly shallow rivers that flow through top producers Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, barges are carrying less than their usual load. The situation is so desperate in Paraguay that the country is asking neighboring Brazil to release water from the giant Itaipu hydroelectric dam, after vessels have run aground and logjams are forming in river ports because barges can’t move. In a key Argentine leg of the 4,900-kilometer (3,000-mile) Parana River, uncertainty over dredging work could make it even harder for farmers to ship their harvests.