Rice Output From South America’s Top Shippers to Drop

Rice output in South America's three largest exporters is likely to drop 5 percent in 2009-2010 after drought cut water supplies, a researcher said.

Production in Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina is likely to decline from a year ago after water levels in reservoirs fell to 90 percent of capacity, Bruno Lanfranco, senior researcher at the National Agriculture Research Institute of Uruguay, said in an interview in Cebu, central Philippines today.

Brazil's milled rice imports will rise to 900,000 metric tons in the 2009-2010 marketing year, from 800,000 tons a year earlier, as drought curbs output, Lanfranco said. The South American nation's parboiled rice exports may drop to 500,000 tons, from 750,000 a year earlier, he said.