South Africa to see Corn Crop 30% Lower Year on Year

As drought continues to grip South Africa, the country’s 2015 corn crop is estimated to be 30% lower than the previous year’s crop, reports Bloomberg.

A Bloomberg survey estimates that 2015 corn output totaled 9.94 million tons – down from 14.3 million tons of corn harvested in 2014. This estimate is in line with the last official forecast of between 9.75 million tons and 10.1 million tons for 2015 crop production released in September 2015 by the Crop Estimates Committee.

Moving into 2016, South Africa will likely need to import 3 million tons of corn to meet domestic demand in the face of this decline, according to national lobby group for grain and oilseed farmers, Grain SA.

With rainfall at its lowest since the weather service began keeping records of such data in 1904, the committee states that corn sowing in 2015 fell to the smallest area since 2006.

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