KITE: despite the bad harvest, there is no need to expect an increase in the price of corn

By: STA Date: 2024. 10. 17. 10:00

Despite the poor domestic harvest, István Kovács, KITE’s crop trade business director, does not expect the price of corn to rise in the near future, after the harvest in Europe and the world reaches last year’s level.

(Photo: Pixabay)

The business director of KITE Zrt. spoke about this at the Agroinform.hu online conference with nearly 150 participants, according to the specialist portal’s information on Wednesday. István Kovács said that the corn harvest is almost finished. This year, due to heat stress, the yield average is only 5.5-5.7 tons per hectare instead of last year’s 7.5-8 tons, so the total yield will be about 5 million tons, compared to last year’s 6 million tons. Although there are even worse crop averages in the region (3 tons in Romania, 4 tons in Bulgaria), the weather did not have a negative effect on Europe’s total production (10 tons in Austria, 9 tons in Germany). World production will practically reach last year’s 1.2 billion tons in 2024, he added. As a result of the summer heat stress, after the previous 15-20 percent lag, the domestic prices have now reached the prices of the Paris commodity exchange MATIF (in the 41st week it was about HUF 86,000 per ton), so it seems appropriate to sell the harvested crop now – István Kovács pointed out.

This year, around 30-40 percent of the harvest was infected to a greater or lesser extent with fungal toxins (mycotoxins), as plants weakened by heat stress were more easily infected with fungi

This process was also strengthened by the increased presence of pests (for example corn moth). Maize with a toxin level above the limit value cannot be sold as feed, but only for the purpose of biofuel production, at a significantly lower price – noted the expert. According to his opinion, where the average yield reached 7-8 tons, corn cultivation was also profitable this year, but where the crop was more seriously damaged due to drought and pests, it produced a loss. As a result of this year’s unfavorable experiences, it is expected that next year the area under corn cultivation will decrease from this year’s 870,000 hectares, significantly below the levels of around 1.2 million hectares typical of a decade ago.

The 100 percent Hungarian-owned KITE Mezőgazdasági Szolgáltató és Kereskedelmi Zrt. is the country’s market-leading agricultural integrator, the Nádudvar-based group has a trade and service network organized into 5 regions and 20 sub-centers, employing 1,800 workers. According to public company data, it achieved sales revenue of about HUF 495 billion last year, after HUF 610 billion the previous year. Its profit after tax in 2023 was 15.3 billion forints, after 25.3 billion in 2022.

MTI