After having faced an intense drought last year at the same period, we are now in the opposite situation: Northeast Argentina and the adjacent parts of Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil have been hit by extensive flooding.
Since the beginning of the year, the area has received about 5 times the long-term expected average rainfall. You can see in previous posts that we had to defer several times sowing of crops due to heavy and frequent rains. Rains have hit wheat harvesting as well as soybean, corn and rice plantations.
“Article from La Nacion, dated 09/01/19”
For us, the situation is the most pronounced in Corrientes and in Salta provinces where we have Tata Cua forest and Curupi Pora farm, and San Bartolo farm respectively.
While in some part of Corrientes province water is nearly 2 meters deep and displacing the herds of cattle, we have been more preserved so far. We register 424 mm in December vs 190 mm historical average for the month and 247 mm from 01/01 to 13/01/19. As a consequence, we could not sow corn and we will replace this sowing by pasture (ray grass & oat) in March. Stocks of silage are already at low level given the past drought and the current situation may emphasis the situation if we can not sow pasture to feed the herd. To this end, we are already taking some preventing measures for the cattle in Curupi Pora farm (over 5,900 heads) if the situation was to continue and some incidence in the production can be anticipated too.
“Article from Corrientes Tourist office, dated 09/01/19”
At San Bartolo where the climate should be currently hot and dry, we have some plots close to river flooded (excess water coming from the north) and emphasis by unusual rainfalls (from July to December, we have registered +157% compared with the historical average for the same period – only for the 2nd week of January, we register 105 mm of rains).
Given the situation, we are enhancing sanitary controls of the cattle and taking several preventing measures (over 3,000 heads there). However, we are anticipating some negative effects on meat production as well as for the pregnancy ratio.