“Biological catastrophe”: they presented a project to declare an agricultural emergency due to a fearsome corn parasite

The national deputies Luis Picat AND Martin Ardohain presented a project to declare an agricultural emergency due to the corn leafhopper (dalbulus maidis), an insect vector of the Spiroplasma kunkeli bacterium, a lethal disease for cereals, which is affecting the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Chaco, Catamarca, Tucumán, Salta, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and La Pampa.

As Picat explained Rural Clarin, the agricultural emergency, like any climate emergency, has three phases. The first, he continued, is the declaration, which refers to certain tax benefits, such as the payment of income tax. The second is zoning, which consists in determining, through satellite images, the affected surface. And in the third, depending on the membership of each province, the payment of rural property tax can be exempted or postponed.

Furthermore, the project calls for urging the national government and interested provincial administrations to do so work in a coordinated manner reduce the impact and advance of the parasite and ask that the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, together with the technical teams of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), establish comprehensive and mandatory management protocolsor for producers, taking into account regional differences.

“Although this disease is not new in the north of our country, having recorded cases in the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Chaco and Corrientes, this year the novelty has been its dizzying growth and its spread to other provinces such as Córdoba, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and recently cases have been recorded in La Pampa, which have set off all the alarms due to its strong impact on the corn crop and the damage caused”, they explain in the work. “According to specialists, we are faced with the most abundant population detected in the last 10 years”, adds the text.

The Buenos Aires Cereal Exchange cut the corn crop by 2.5 million tons product of the advance of the leafhopper and the heat wave. Production of 54 million tonnes is currently expected. But, according to manufacturers’ estimates, the damage will be even greater.

Continuing with the data of the same entity, it is estimated that The potential area with significant damage could amount to 360 thousand hectares, covering 27 departments.

“According to the latest data obtained, the most affected areas are the center of Santa Fe, the north-east of Córdoba and the west of Entre Ríos, with peaks in severity of the disease and major cuts to production projections. In fact, in ” In these regions there are lots that cannot be collected directly, because they will be completely lost”, reads the project.

The leafhopper is very small in size, no more than 3-4 mm in length, and persistently and propagatively transmits the bacterium Spiroplasma kunkelii, which causes a disease that has shown a recurrent incidence in the north and south of the country. from Brasil. But in this last campaign the plague spread to several productive regions.