Around 75 percent of Argentina's topsoil has been depleted by desertification and damaging farming and grazing methods, warns the Secretariat on the Environment and Natural Resources. But in the southern region of Patagonia, the proportion is as high as 90 percent. Excessive grazing has depleted the topsoil, which has led to a drop in livestock production. In the late 1990s, there were just eight million sheep on the grasslands of Patagonia, which for decades provided forage for 20 million.

The depletion of the soil is also seen in the central, northwestern and eastern parts of the country, not only due to excessive grazing but to indiscriminate logging of forests.

Germany's development aid agency (GTZ) decided to grant a three-year extension to a soil recovery program it has been carrying out in Argentina for over a decade, in order to expand the fight against the desertification process.