South Africa raises corn estimate on higher yield

Tag: white sorghum

South Africa, the biggest corn producer in Africa, said farmers will probably reap 2.4 percent more of the crop this year than it predicted last month because yields will be better than expected.

The harvest will probably total 11.6 million metric tons, compared with the 11.33 million tons forecast last month, the Pretoria-based Crop Estimates Committee said in an e-mailed statement today. The figure is higher than the median forecast of 11.5 million tons of 10 traders surveyed by Bloomberg News. Last year's crop was 7.13 million tons.

Farmers may reap 6.86 million tons of white corn and 4.74 million tons of yellow this year, the committee said. White corn is used to make corn meal, a staple food, while yellow corn is mainly fed to animals.

The committee raised the forecast yield to 4.14 tons a hectare (2.47 acres) for white corn, from 4.05 tons last month. The yield for yellow corn was boosted to 4.46 tons from 4.36 tons. White corn has gained 34 percent this year on the South African Futures Exchange and yellow corn 28 percent.

The sunflower-seed crop forecast was raised 4.1 percent to 872,060 tons while the soy-crop estimate was boosted 2.7 percent to 328,195 tons. The committee raised its forecast for sorghum by 0.8 percent to 272,475 tons and left the dry bean and ground-nut estimates unchanged at 58,975 tons and 85,360 tons.