January 30, 2016

Drought causes 25% drop in South African corn production

Bloomberg - South Africa, the largest corn producer on the [African] continent, will probably reap the smallest harvest since 2007 this year after the country suffered the lowest rainfall since records began because of the global El Nino weather pattern.

Prices for white corn, used to make a staple food known as pap, rose to a record Jan. 21 as dry weather hurt supply. South Africa will probably need to import about 970,000 tons of corn in the year to April and 5 million tons of corn in the following 12 months as rainfall declined to the least since at least 1904, according to Grain SA, the biggest farm lobby.

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