Record cold is engulfing large swathes of the South American continent this week, ravaging the region’s crops, lowering yields and spiking prices.
Thanks to a powerful Antarctic air mass, nations such as Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and BRAZIL are suffering an extreme and unprecedented chill, with historic snowfall to match.
Heavy frosts have been reported in Brazil’s sugarcane, coffee and corn fields.
The country registered extremely low temperatures on Wednesday, June 30, according to analysts and weather agencies — all the way from the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul to the northern part of São Paulo.
As reported by riotimesonline.com, “São Paulo city registers record low temperatures, expects further drops”.
“It has been a long time since we saw this kind of frosts in Brazil,” said meteorologist Marco Antonio dos Santos.
Heavy frosts have been widespread, from the smaller coffee fields in Paraná, to the vast arabica crops in São Paulo state (Brazil’s second largest coffee producer, after Minas Gerais).
There were also reports of frosts and freezes in the sugarcane fields of São Paulo–a region that accounts for over 60 percent of sugar output in the country.
“For sugarcane, the impact is more severe (than for coffee),” explained Celso Oliveira, a local meteorologist.
“When hit by frosts, cane stops to grow and this reduces the sugar content,” explained Oliveira. “Hence mills harvest before the ideal time,” he continued, as they try to reduce losses and start crushing sooner.
Sizable corn losses have also been noted as the extreme cold persists in area such as Paraná–Brazil’s second-largest cereal producer, weather specialists said.
“Significant losses look likely,” tweeted Arlan Suderman, Chief Commodities Economist for StoneX Group, who added: “Some corn is still pollinating in the region due to late planting.
“(A) small crop gets smaller,” lamented Suderman.
Unfavorable conditions earlier in the season lead to South American corn going into the fields late this year.
Late planting means you run the risk of key development stages for the fledgling crops coinciding with the onset of the cooler months of winter. This year, record early-season cold is exposing the young crops to frosts — as a result, analysts are fearing the worst, and are predicting heavy crop losses ahead.
“The market is worried about contract breaches; crop losses will be higher than 60% in the state of Paraná,” Victor Martins, hedge advisor at Hedgepoint Global Markets, told Agricensus.
“There is no widespread talk of higher imports as yet, but I do not rule out rising Argentinian imports,” Martins said as Brazil strives to plug holes in its domestic corn supply.
“Atmospheric conditions are still favorable for the occurrence of frosts in almost all regions,” read a statement by Simepar, Paraná’s official weather agency, as the polar air mass responsible for this big big freeze continues its steady march up the continent, to even include central regions of Brazil.
Further frosts are expected to close the week, reports reuters.com — a forecast backed-up by the latest GFS run:
GFS 2m Temp Anomalies (C) for July 1 [tropicaltidbits.com].
Clearly visualized above, the record cold isn’t just confined to Brazil but stretches across the majority of the 17.84 million km² South American continent (making it a far-more widespread temperature anomaly than the one currently gripping the Pacific Northwest — but cold isn’t conducive to the AGW catastrophe -in the eyes of the MSM- and so goes unreported).
June 29, 2021
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