By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Apr 22 1997 (IPS)

Increasing numbers of sheep ranches in Patagonia are becoming ghost farms as their owners head for more hospitable climes, unable to survive the weather and the vagaries of the international wool market.

Argentina’s world presence as a major wool producer still remains, as large-scale livestock producers are increasing production. Big companies, like Benetton of Italy which has two million acres, own vast tracts of Patagonian ranchland.

Two years ago, the Argentine government launched an initiative to help small and mid-sized producers improve the quality of wool, as well as to help pay for the sheep to be sheared. After a decade of declining fortunes, however, of these smaller farmers find themselves unable to continue with their herds. Of the 6.7 million sheep who grazed Santa Cruz province in 1986, only 2.8 million remain – and most of those are raised by a handful of large-scale producers who believe the Government scheme is working.

Marcelo Ponde, director of Livestock Production, told IPS that the “Pro Lana” program insures that Argentine wool, formerly rated at prices 30 per cent lower than its main Australian competition, is rapidly im[proving.

Since the Pro-Lana training program was introduced two years ago, wool carrying the “Pro-Lana” seal has boosted exports from a base level that comprised only 8 per cent of the global wool trade. Last year, the total rose to 22 per cent. Ponde says that many European clients now ask for Pro-Lana wool by name.

In 1950, Argentina was the world’s second largest producer of export wool. Today it ranks fifth, trailing Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Uruguay. In 1989, 152 thousand tons were produced compared with only 63,000 today. For years, Argentine production experienced free fall.

Current production – as well as overseas sales to big customers like Italy, Germany, China, France and Belgium – is controled by large landholders. The only role left for small and intermediate producers is to coast to a stop and then auction their land for the best possible price.

First cattle – which earn a dependable profits – and then grain pushed sheep to the margins of Patagonian agricultural productivity. Agricultural experts say any farmer that wants to conduct a profitable wool business must own vast acreage to lower costs through economies-of-scale while incorporating advanced technology.

Without this leverage it is impossible to stay afloat, say the experts. Drought, snow storms, marauding foxes, increasingly high labor costs – added to the declining cost of wool wrought by the growing popularity of cotton and synthetic fabrics – hit small and intermediate producers “like a leveling wind..”

The global wool crisis began in 1991 when prices slumped due to the accumulation of huge stocks in Australia and the collapse of the troubled Russian market. In Argentimna, overgrazing in the Patagonian provinces of Rio Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego also has become the primary cause of that region’s mounting desertification process.

More than 30 per cent of the entire Patagonian land mass is adversely affected by loss of vegetative cover, which means individual producers must own huge “estancias” in order to prevent overgrazing. So, deserted homes began to speckle the countryside – their furnishings covered with dust, household utensils hanging idle from kitchen hooks. Former owners fled to big cities with little more than the clothes on their back.

Some tourists even take their tents and sleeping bags to visit these places as if they were already historic sites, mute witnesses to Argentina’s shifting economic trends.

Agustin Dominguez owns 45,000 acres in Santa Cruz, Argentina’s southernmost province, but says the value of his “spread” is minute relative to similar holdings farther north. In Buenos Aires province,” a couple of acres are all you need to support ten sheep, wheras in Santa Cruz, you need 25 acres to sustain just one,” he says.

Dominguez is considered a small producer with his 4,000 sheep and a persistent drought and then raging snowstorms of recent years tested his survival skills. He recently bought a taxi and now lives in town to get by.

Marcelo Ponde says that to be profitable as a wool producer, it is necessary to have a minimum of 7,000 sheep and at least 175 thousand acres. “Argentina’s little guys can’t afford more than 50,000,” Ponde concedes..

Such is the case of Candida de Alvarez, 60, whose ranch covers 45,000 acres. de Alvarez used to have 4,000 sheep but now has only 500. She lives on a monthly pension of 200 dollars and can no longer afford her hired hand.

Like many farmers before her, Candida de Alvarez operates her ranch from hand to mouth, fully aware that at any moment, she will be forced padlock her front door and move to the city.

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