South Korea wants to lower rice production - attache

South Korea wants to reduce rice production and seeks to do that it seek to cut acres to 1.76 million  by 2018, encourage planting of other crops, release stocks to use as animal feed, and promote activities to increase consumption, USDA attache report said.

Also, it raised projected wheat imports to 4.3 million tons from previous forecast of 4 million as competitively-priced feed grade wheat replaces corn. In the latter half of 2015, Australia was the largest supplier of wheat to South Korea followed by the United States.

Argentina is expected to harvest 58.5 million metric tons of soybeans this year.

Meanwhile, market year 2015/16 corn imports remain unchanged at 10 million tons. The United States supplies about 30% of South Korea’s imported corn.

Argentina soybean production raised to 58.5 million tons – attache

Argentina is expected to harvest 58.5 million metric tons of soybeans this year, up from USDA’s current forecast of 57 million. However, that is down from the previous harvest of 61.4 million.

“While some areas are affected by a lack of moisture, overall conditions in the main producing areas are generally good,” the report said of the crop.

The report left 2015/2016 soybean exports unchanged from the previous forecast at 11.4 million tons, since exporters have generally found crushing soybeans presents more lucrative returns than exporting them.

 Corn producer South Africa to import corn, wheat rice - attache

In it latest report on South Africa and the drought there, USDA’s attache office said the county will have to import about 3 million metric tons of corn, 2 million of wheat and 1 million of rice the in 2015/2016 market year to meet domestic needs.

The market year is October-September for wheat and May-April for corn and rice.

The drought there is “one of the worst droughts ever recorded”, the report said, and is hurting the crops. Corn production is expected to drop by 25% to 8 million tons in the 2015/16 MY, while wheat production will be down 14% at 1.5 million.

The attache predicts a 10% increase in South Africa’s rice consumption in the 2015/16 market year to 970,000 tons, due to drought reflected record corn prices. Therefore, South Africa’s rice imports are expected to increase 10% to 1.1 million tons.

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