Indiana Soybean Farmers Wrap Up Tour of Argentina
Published: Friday, February 3, 2023
A group of Indiana soybean farmers recently completed a nine-day trip to Argentina to learn about the country's agricultural infrastructure technology and the status of its crops. The South American country is the world's No. 1 exporter of soybean meal and soybean oil. However, due to a multi-year drought, Argentina is expecting a 40% de-crease in soybean yields.
Argentina's growing season reminds Bremen farmer Joe Stoller, of the drought of 2012 here in the U.S.
"Things are green, but the corn is not knee high and it's a very spotty stand," he said. "The beans are barely out of the ground. Once again, they're not good stands. The crops are just not very good."
Denise Scarborough, a LaPorte County grower, said she was expecting to see farmers utilize irrigation, and was surprised to see very few mitigation efforts.
"They have a lot of salt water in their ground, so they can't use it to irrigate," she said. "So that's definitely an ad-vantage we have in Indiana and in the United States with the aquifers we have and being able to irrigate on our farms."
All of the farmers participating on the tour serve on the Indiana Soybean Alliance board of direc-tors. They, and ISA staff members, fielded questions from Indiana ag media via Zoom last Thursday afternoon.
According to Ed Ebert, ISA's senior director of market development, Argentina is experiencing the worst drought in 70 years.
Visiting Argentina for the fourth time in his lifetime, Ebert said the drought is historic. The soybeans are ankle-height, and in some cases barely out of the ground. He said the corn crop is also suffering from a lack of rain.
Normally, Argentina has two growing seasons, similar to a double-crop situation here in the U.S.
"What's happened is they have deferred their planting from what they consider to be their first crop corn or first crop soybeans," Ebert said, "and this dryness and heat has pushed them now into what would traditionally be their second crop that they would be planting."
Without rainfall, he expects the crop losses to be around 40% when they harvest in May and June.
"It's hard to overstate how different it is from what I've experienced before about the same time," Ebert said. "(The crop) is less green and you can see more unplanted area than I've ever seen in my travels down here. It's pretty signifi-cant."
Mark Legan, a pork producer from Hendricks County, said 90% of the crops are planted with no-till equipment, and the farmers use cover crops to retain soil moisture. There have been some rains, but like 2012 in Indiana, Legan said they've been mostly of the hit-and-miss variety.
"You've got to remem-ber this is basically the end of July, Indiana time, and they (Argentinean soybeans) should be setting a lot of pods on the soybean plants, the corn should be tasseling," Legan said. "About the tallest corn we've been seeing is knee high or maybe waist high. So, they're hurting, there's no doubt about that."
Argentina also grows a fair amount of wheat. However, the wheat "was basically a fail-ure," Legan said, and growers are just now planting the next crop, corn or beans.
Regarding livestock, many farms raise beef cattle with rotational grazing. There are some poultry farms but no hogs. Most of the farms had horses for pleasure riding.
"Their whole livestock economy is built around the grass-fed beef deal," Legan said.
Both Jim Douglas, a farmer from Shelby County, and Scarborough said the drought has taken its toll on the hopes of Argentinean farmers.
Douglas said one farm owner was "despondent" due to the ongoing drought and loss of income. He sells bulls to diversify his income stream, but he lamented that his equipment was aging and he didn't have the money to replace it.
According to Scarborough, the Indiana farmers ate lunch at a family farm where the owners were struggling to turn a profit. She said they have concerns about transitioning the farm to the next generation.
"This is the driest they have been in about 70 years," she said. "Being in a three-year drought, their profits are just not there."
Scarborough said the challenges are the same regardless of size. Argentina has a mix of both large and small farms.
Argentinean farms differ from the U.S. in three ways. One is the size of crop fields.
"You can see forever down here," Stoller said. "There are very large fields."
Because of the large size of the farms, many owners rely on custom planting and harvesting. Scarborough said it's very similar to custom wheat harvest in the Western U.S.
All of the soybeans planted in Argentina are genetically modified varieties.
Another difference is their approach to equipment. The tractors and planters in use are not high-tech.
"We really haven't seen anything that we would consider modern farm equipment like we would have in Indiana," Douglas said. "All of it has been well-used."
A fourth difference is that Argentinean farmers sell all their crops at harvest and do not store them. The Indiana delegation did observe some farms that were storing grain in silage-like bags. However, there were no large bins on farms.
At harvest, all the corn and soybeans are shipped by truck directly to the ports.
Mike Koehne, a Greensburg farmer who sits on executive committee of the Soy Transportation Coalition, said the U.S. has a competitive advantage in terms of transportation and infrastructure.
"When we were in Buenos Aires, we saw that they had a separate truck lane for trucks going to port, which was very conven-ient," he said. "It kept it out of the local traffic. Their infrastructure is nothing like ours. I think that we sur-pass them with our inland waterways, our rail and transportation of grain."
According to Legan, the Ar-gentinean farmers also have to pay a 33% export tax. He added that the inflation rate is nearly 100%.
"Anything they can do in U.S. dollars seems to be the way they want to work and the way they want to go," he said.
Despite some disadvantages, Argentina is on the rise as a major soybean produc-er.
"They're massive in terms of their focus on soy product export to the globe," Ebert said. "They are a significant player, which is why the market is so reactive with what's going on with this continu-ing weather story."
While the U.S. and Argentinean farms differ in many ways, Courtney Kingery, ISA CEO, said she noticed that when the Indiana growers sat down to talk with their Argentinean counterparts, the differ-ences seemed to melt away.
"Even though they were speaking different languages, they were still speaking the same language," she said, referring to farming. "That's what was really interesting to me was the human connection."
During their stay in Argentina, the Indiana farmers also visited the Min-istry of Agriculture, met with the Argentinean Soybean Assn., toured the Louis Dreyfus grain terminal in Rosario, visit-ed a plant breeding nursery in Buenos Aires, and made a stop at the Bolsa de Rosario Mercantile Exchange, which is also known as the Rosario Board of Trade.
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