Expoagro starts next Tuesday
.
This edition marks forty years since the well-remembered Expodinámica de La Laura, in Chacabuco, which inaugurated the era of field samples, exhibiting technology in action.
In the manner of the Farm Progress Show in the North American Midwest, from which it was inspired.
Expoagro passed it by, in area, number of visitors, presence of companies (this year, a record with more than 600 stands), infrastructure and organization.
In
a very special year, marked by a climate catastrophe and a gigantic economic crisis.
But there we are.
Because
from the labyrinths you exit at the top.
And above is called technology
.
If Argentina did not fall into a thousand pieces, with the nonsense of economic policy, it is because here there was an impressive technological revolution.
And
these events became one of the key levers of the Second Revolution of the Pampas
.
There the great technological milestones that allowed the phenomenal change of Argentine agriculture were launched.
I remember that in La Laura the main event was the passing of the share plows, with tractors throwing their mouths with puffs of smoke.
But before long the plow disappeared from the scene.
And in its fall it dragged down the chisels, field cultivators, disc and tooth harrows, vibrocultivators, rabastos, weeders... This soil-destroying
paraphernalia gradually gave way to direct sowing
.
Farmers quickly became convinced that it was possible to eliminate tillage and replace mechanical weed control with chemical control.
Huge energy savings
, stopping the dramatic soil erosion caused by traditional implements.
And
biotechnology arrived
.
Today all the food consumed in the world comes from basic products that have incorporated Genetically Modified Organisms (transgenic).
Even wheat:
long before the HB4 event was released, virtually all Argentine wheat flour is protein-enriched with soybean meal, which was the first crop to incorporate a transgene
.
It was the tolerance to the herbicide glyphosate, which made it possible to triple production between 1996 (launch year, precisely at Expoagro) and 2010.
All animal protein produced and consumed in the world is based on GM corn and soybean meal
.
The dietary transition that was unleashed in Asian countries could not have been sustained without the growth of these two basic products, which continue to expand today.
Events for an
efficient control of weeds and insects, lowering costs and increasing productivity.
The world is now talking about
“regenerative agriculture”.
An abstract concept, but with a bitter aftertaste.
A kind of Trojan horse that threatens all these advances that -happily- we continue to display with pride.
The true regeneration was that of direct seeding, stimulated by biotechnology.
Farmers quickly became convinced that it was
possible to eliminate tillage and replace mechanical weed control with chemical control.
Huge energy savings, stop the dramatic erosion of soils
caused by traditional implements.
Implements of torture that continue to swarm in "developed" countries, from where the theory of "regeneration" comes.
Old Europe finished with its soils 200 years ago and in the agricultural machinery halls, plows and other medieval instruments of torture continue to dominate the show.
Expoagro is the time to stick out your chest.
To hit
the table of global agriculture
.
Tell the world that in Argentina, despite our self-induced tribulations, we found a new course for agriculture.
That
nobody produces so many kilos per millimeter of falling water during cultivation
, that nobody wastes less
nutrients
than in these pampas, that nobody consumes less fuel per ton.
In short,
long before there was talk of emissions and carbon footprint, we were already doing it here
.
It is also
the message that the politicians who will parade through the show must take away
, today convinced that
agriculture is on the side of the solution.
look also
Exchange gap: the great axis of protests and proposals
Record North American soybean exports to China