ARGENTINA-ARGENTINA: Increased Grain Yields Forecast

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 21 1997 (IPS) - Agricultural officials have forecast increased yields from wheat, corn, soybeans and sunflowers for 1997 after a successful harvest last year.

In 1996, bad harvests in the northern hemisphere, along with increased demand in Asia and Brazil pushed the price of Argentine grains up by as much as 50 percent. Producers were able to invest in seeds, fertiliser and new machiney which should increase last year’s harvest of nearly 55 million tons by about two million tons.

Soybeans, the star of Argentine grains, remain the main agricultural export, accounting for 20 percent of the country’s hard currency. For 1997, official sources have predicted a record harvest of about 14 million tons of soybeans compared to 12.5 million tons in 1996.

Alejandro Ramirez, an analyst on agricultural production noted that the Argentine producer was always ready to modernize, but the good weather and increased prices of 1997 “provided him with the means to take advantage of all sorts of new technologies.”

Since 1990, when the Argentine economy was opened to international competition, the modernization process has been enhanced by improvements in transportation and harbor facilities along with advances in genetically modified seed.

In the current boom period, the sale of fertilizers, agro- chemicals, seeds, tractors and harvesters have increased by 15 to 40 per cent, according to business reports.

Tractor manufacturers said 3,856 units were delivered to the domestic market in 1995 but sales jumped to 5,433 last year. Seed suppliers acknowledges an increase of about 40 per cent in the same time period.

Furthermore, producers are making better use of financial instruments such as futures markets, and also are making use of computerized harvest control and satellite images which facilitate observation of the growth process at each stage of development.

Guillermo Ruiz, a consulting systems engineer, said that “without doubt, producers re-equipped themselves last year and this is going to let them balance their yields so as to avoid the sharp increases and declines in production that characterized previous years.

Ruiz himself is an example of the recent boom. Suddenly, there are a large number of computer experts working in the agricultural sector but “there is still a long row to hoe” in modernizing agricultural mthods, he said

Not only are there lower quality lands that could be added to the total productive acreage, by means of improvements in irrigation and other techniques, in comparison with other countries Argentina still has a low yield rate per cultivated unit area.

On average, corn yields 4,200 kilograms per hectare, sunflower 1,900, soybeans 2,500 and wheat 2,300.

“But with better irrigation and pest control, corn could yield 6,000 kilos per hectare, and soybeans as many as 8,000,” Ruiz said

For these reasons, and despite protests from small and medium- sized producers they lack access to sufficient credit, agriculture still holds a promising future for Argentina as a whole, analysts agreed.