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Catastrophe in the provinces: the drought was the coup de grace for agricultural production and the outlook is bleak

2023-03-21T11:04:15.212Z


Leaders of the Argentine Rural Society from different regions detail the serious situation inland and the heavy losses that the country will suffer.



Three consecutive years of scarce rainfall, untimely frosts and successive heat waves devastated agricultural production in a large part of the Argentine territory.

Lost crops and pastures, hundreds of thousands of dead animals, herds with poor body condition and dry water courses, constitute the postcards of a disastrous campaign that will leave enormous losses for the producers and for the country.

To find out about the situation in the different provinces, Clarín Rural spoke with

leaders of the Argentine Rural Society

(SRA) who met at the Rosario Stock Exchange, where they presented Governor Omar Perotti, legislators, authorities and businessmen, a report on losses due to drought in Santa Fe, the most affected province in Argentina.

SRA leaders met at the Rosario Stock Exchange.

From left to right: Nores, Harrington, Etchevehere, Diez de Tejada, Nicolás Pino, Facht, Méndez.

Santa Fe, the worst

According to the SRA study, losses due to water deficit in the province of Santa Fe so far amount to

4.29 billion dollars, 10% of the Gross Geographic Product

, being its worst agricultural campaign in three decades.

Ricardo Ramondino

, delegate of the entity, lives in the countryside, near the city of Gálvez, he is a veterinarian and a lover of cows.

“In these days

we are signing the death certificate of 80% of the production of Santa Fe

.

This is much more serious than you think.

We feel completely alone

, completely ignored”, he expresses.

Of those promised by the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, at the end of January, he says “

nothing materialized

”.

"Neither the Banco Nación nor the AFIP, that the producers were not going to be intimated, that the advances of Profits were going to stop, nothing was fulfilled, there is total misgovernment, in addition, they cannot promise us things that already appear in the Emergency law”, he adds.

The veterinarian points out that

in 2022 Santa Fe contributed 1.3 trillion pesos to the national state coffers

, "it is 2.7 billion dollars and

only 4 billion

pesos have now returned in aid to the province."

In his opinion, the first thing the national government should do is

prevent the chain of payments from being cut

.

"For this, we have to help the producer - who lost financing for ten years and has no back - to cancel all the debts committed to the harvest so that

he can plant again

," he says.

As detailed by Ramondino, soybeans cost around 25 quintals per hectare and in a normal year, obtaining 30 quintals leaves a profit of 5. However, this season the harvest will be lean or nil.

"If you lose 20 like this year,

you need four years of earnings of 5 quintals to recover, so this cannot be fixed with a campaign of good rains next year

, you need four years to put the country back on track," he explains.

“The producer is bad and everyone is going to be bad, the merchants of the towns, the truckers, everyone, the countryside is an agro-industrial chain;

and we did not find an echo in the Government ”, laments the leader.

In the heel of the Santa Fe boot, between Venado Tuerto and Rufino,

Carlos Facht

, who has managed a ranch in Amenábar for 36 years, has never seen a similar drought.

"

It's the worst drought we've seen in all of history

, there's general water stress,

we've lost all the second-rate soybeans

, we've already dumped the farm, and the worst thing is that

we've run out of reserves in the dairy, that's what more critical

”, he tells Clarín Rural.

Carlos Facht, producer from Amenábar, Santa Fe.

Very close to the La Picassa lagoon, in the La Barrancosa establishment, he does agriculture, livestock and milks 1400 cows.

There, in the dairy, due to lack of food, 

some 300 animals had to go down, which led to a reduction in production of more than 20 percent

.

"It's a very complex situation, we had some silo carry but it's gone," he says.

Now, they are

shrinking the rodeos and selling some discards in advance

.

“We have a Colorado Angus herd and we are also in the same vein, making our selection prematurely to lower the number of heads because we have run out of grass completely.

Today we live on a few alfalfas that were left hanging from the ground in a few lots and in the rest

there is nothing, the grass creaks

.

We never expected this”, says Facht.

In the winter, being so close to the lagoon, the wheat did not do so badly despite the few winter rains.

"Luckily we are living off of that,

exchanging the wheat that we have left for bran and other inputs

to be able to maintain the dairy," he says.

In maize, the situation is very uneven. Some lots that received some showers during flowering may produce something, but many others, due to the high temperatures, affected pollination and did not get to form grains.

"We live a lot from silage,

we chop 800 hectares for the dairy, the cabin and the feed lot, and this year the volumes are exactly half of what we obtain in a normal year

, that is to say that the cost is double", he details. .

For its part,

the first class soybean is aborting beans

and it is not yet known what or how much it will harvest. "We can have some lots of up to 40 quintals and others of 5, there is everything," he says.

The producer says that

they will have to sell the little wheat they have left to face the payment of the real estate tax and the advance of Profits,

"that we are not going to have," he clarifies.

Likewise, he is "

outraged" with the soybean dollar

.

“It cannot be that we have to pay rents at an unreal value.

The owner of the field asks that we pay him soybeans at dollar value when we don't know what dollar we are going to sell our products with.

The Government is going to have to put its batteries and look for

genuine help that is equitable for everyone in this context of disaster

, ”he claimed.

"

If it doesn't rain between March and April, wheat won't be able to be planted

, but now, what the government has to do is make funds available, be they loans with a one-year grace period, with subsidized rates, because it's needed re-sow and the field is without resources.

A kind of Marshall Plan is needed for the field for the 23-24 harvest

because this is going to be disastrous," says

Soledad Diez de Tejada

, director of the SRA for Santa Fe and farmer from Venado Tuerto.

"The drought came to show that

the Argentine countryside is decapitalized by twenty years of withholdings

, if we were not decapitalized we would not need to be asking the Government for alms," he says.

Between rivers

It is another of the provinces extremely punished by the lack of rain.

All their productive activities are affected: agriculture, livestock, dairy, poultry, forestry, rice, citriculture, none escaped this climatic catastrophe.

“It is something that we have never experienced in the history of Entre Ríos,

the water courses and the cutwaters have dried up, we never had such a deep drought

.

We came from two years with drought, very bad productively, but this year he broke all records”, says director

Diego Etchevehere

.

“If the State knew how to be present throughout our productive life, taking resources from us through withholdings and exchange rate splitting, it is time for it to also be present but helping agricultural producers,” he says.

“We need

the Government to exempt us from taxes in this harsh reality that we are living in and to provide us with lines of financing to be able to continue

, that is what we are specifically asking for.

But the Government responded with totally insufficient measures, which, despite having promised to implement,

it did not comply

.

At least in the province of Entre Ríos there are no credits, there is no help, there is no financing, what has to do with the AFIP was not executed either.

The producers from Entre Ríos are alone

”, He affirms.

According to Etchevehere, the Government caused the producer to arrive "

very weakened and exhausted

" to face this situation, mainly due to export duties and the exchange rate split.

“The producer is not going to be able to face the new campaign, he is in a kind of paralysis.

This was

the coup de grace in a circumstance that was already bad

, it is a reality that

takes us all off the field

, there is no producer in the province of Entre Ríos -of any activity and of any size- that has been saved from this situation," he describes.

What is coming for autumn and winter, according to the leader, is a "

desolate panorama

" since there is no moisture for wheat planting, nor fodder reserves for livestock and dairy, nor possibilities of planting winter greens.

It is a situation of total paralysis.

everything is negative, wherever you want to look at them

.

He worries us that the Government, which knew how to manage to invent the soybean dollar to seek resources and have more dollars, today is the great absentee.

It is always the same:

pure story, words to the wind, and nothing materializes in reality

”, He indicates.

Cordova

In the Mediterranean province, there are different situations since some regions had a better time during the month of February but in recent days the drought has become widespread.

Córdoba regularly sows 7.7 million hectares of summer crops, but this season,

due to lack of humidity, some 400,000 of soybeans and 500,000 of corn were not planted

.

"The Cordovan core zone has been the one with the greatest water deficit, while the southern zone has been more favored by rains, but on February 18 they suffered frosts

that liquidated some 250,000 hectares of late corn and some 480,000 hectares of soybeans

," he pointed out.

Andrés Costamagna

, director of SRA in the province Many

batches of early maize were destined for grazing or chopped

, and those that are coming to harvest will have a yield of 2,500 to 3,000 kilos per hectare when they usually exceed 10,000 kilos. , it is estimated that

Some 400,000 crops will not be harvested

and what is threshed

will yield 30 percent of normal

.

In the eastern zone, where the main dairy basin is located

, production fell by 30 to 40 percent.

"The alfalfas have produced much less because the napas migrated to the depth where the roots no longer reach it, for this reason the dairy farmers have lowered the production of liters, but they also receive punishment from the industry for the low solids in milk," he describes. Costamagna.

Meanwhile, the

breeding stock or full cycle

that takes place in the north of the province,

does not have fodder and in many cases is without drinking water for the farm

.

"It has not received rain and there is no grass, in the most organized fields they managed with the reserves until February 10, but the less organized ones have been in crisis since November of last year," says the producer.

Meat farming, on the other hand, is going through a severe crisis

and

the damage will be seen in the low calvings next year.

Losses of between 30 and 50 percent 

depending on the field and management are

already anticipated.

Buenos Aires

The reality of the vast province of Buenos Aires is uneven. In the coastal area the climate has been benevolent, but in the rest of its territory, the

lack of rain and frost caused significant damage

.

From Tres Arroyos upwards, the drought hit the fields severely.

In the fine, half of the production was harvested and the thick came very badly

”, says

Luis Harrington

, director of district 3 of the SRA.

"In the center of the province we are going to have a

decrease in calves and a drop in pregnancy rates

that is going to be very important and the consequences are going to be for the whole country because

we are going to have a decrease in meat for the year that is coming

, ”he warns.

“We are going to have very big problems,

it is estimated that only in the granary part we are going to have a loss of 20,000 million dollars

.

And to that we must add livestock, horticulture, fruit growing, everything was affected.

The problem is serious for Argentina and

we do not have help from the Government

.

We ask that they not put their foot on us, that they correct the exchange difference, that they remove our withholdings and that they let us do it, from that we are going to resurface, ”says Harrington

In the Puan area, the winter rains "did not manage to fill the aquifers necessary to face a good campaign, with which the wheat

harvest was zero

, but if we were able to survive with the animals, we have been able to keep them well fed" , says

Adela Nores

, director of district 3 of the SRA.

There they received more rainfall.

"I think that we are going to have a production that is going to be very useful for the food of Argentines because we have farms, we have calves and the pregnancy rate, for example in my field, is 97%, which is very high," she points out. .

For Nores, something "very serious" that affects livestock production is the closure of meat exports.

“Our hands and legs have been tied, Argentina will never earn dollars for meat if we don't open the market.

The Argentine has lowered his meat consumption from 70 kilos per inhabitant per year to 40 kilos because inflation prevents him from buying, and all that meat could be reverted to funds for the country if only the export market were opened ”, he analyzes.

currents

The estimated productive losses in the province of Corrientes until February 20, are estimated at $

130,000 million

With 4,630,000 heads, the province has the fourth largest livestock stock in the country and, as a consequence of the drought,

60,000 million kilos of meat were lost, which is equivalent to an economic impact of $26,000 million,

 according to a report by the Coordinadora de Entidades Productive (CEP) of Corrientes.

In addition,

losses due to animal mortality are estimated at close to 100,000 heads and $11,000 million

.

Thus, in total,

the sector has lost $37.1 billion

due to inclement weather.

The

forestry sector

, which covers 550,000 hectares of planted forests in the province, is the most affected, registering

economic losses of $52.700 million

in this period.

In rice cultivation,

a drop in production of 470,000 tons is projected, which represents a

loss of $23.5 billion.

Citrus production

was also

seriously damaged, with losses estimated at

$15,000 million

.

While in

yerba mate, they already calculate a loss of $2 billion

 .

According to forest producer 

Ignacio Méndez

, director of the SRA of Corrientes and Misiones, “the situation in the province is critical, both for livestock and for the rice and forestry sectors.

There are no more fodder resources, there was a lot of liquidation of livestock stocks and the producers no longer know what to do to feed and drink their animals”.

The lagoons and inland rivers used for rice irrigation are dry.

“There is nowhere to get water, this year is going to be terrible for rice production;

In afforestation, we come from three years of drought and last year we had fires, so many hectares were burned and the growth rate was affected, which fell by half”, describes Méndez.

Ignacio Méndez, director SRA Corrientes.

Today, in the fields of Corrientes there is no grass and no grain either because the few agricultural crops that are grown in the territory have also failed.

Without forage resources to face the winter, many producers

hastened the liquidation of herds

.

"This will initially have an impact on a lower price of meat due to oversupply but in the medium term the price will rise due to lack of stock," explained the producer.

“The only thing that can save us today in Corrientes is that the rainfall regime returns to normal,” says Méndez with a trace of frustration and sadness.

The testimonies are repeated in many points throughout the country.

The magnitude of the damage and losses that the drought is leaving and will leave at an economic and social level, both in the agricultural sector and in the country as a whole, are alarming.

Extraordinary and urgent measures are required to alleviate the situation that allow the agribusiness chain to continue moving to boost a national economy that creaks as much as the dry crops in the field.

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-03-21

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