It wasn’t Massa, it wasn’t magic: it was soy

The girl on the cover of this edition of Rural trumpet is soy. The pretext was given by the Acsoja annual seminar, which took place this week. An event that fell at the right time: everyone observes what is happening with the “Massa experiment”, an alchemy imagined to arrive at the early liquidation of soy by producers (including stocks and cooperatives), to alleviate the difficult reserve situation.

The result was successful, and not even the “friendly fire” unleashed by the Central Bank has stopped the sale of soybean dollars. Six billion dollars, 20% more than expected by the Minister of Economy for the whole of September. And there is still a week left. We will see if the obstacles to the purchase of some financial assets linked to the value of the dollar (with the foot of the president of the BCRA, Miguel Pesce, in the revolving door) will end up affecting, but the goal is achieved.

We said that two weeks ago what the minister needed was to show up in the United States, where had his cap gone, showing some letters. When she met the head of the IDB on Tuesday 6 (Monday 5 had been a vacation in the United States) she already had more than a billion dollars in it. Which helped him get the most out of the body, and opened the door to all negotiations after. Emoticon photos included. It is worth remembering a month ago most economists spoke of a “black September”. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t Masa. The letter was, when not, the battered soybean.

And that it happened despite the fact that we come from the worst harvest of the last ten years. We have just scratched 40 million tons, well below the 60 that we managed to reach in 2015. This was highlighted on Thursday by the head of Acsoja, Luis Zubizarreta. A decline in the cultivated area is combined with an apparent stagnation of crops. This determines at the same time a idle capacity of 50% in the processing industry, whose installed capacity has historically grown above production. There is a reason Argentina leads the world market for soybean meal and oil.

The United States and Brazil threaten the Argentine leadership

But stagnation threatens this leadership. The United States and in particular Brazil are growing both in production and in added value. In both cases, with an increase in surface area and yields. Perhaps we do not perceive the deleterious effect of backwardness due to the lack of a legal framework that promotes genetic progress.

All products have a life cycle. They are born, develop and die. The question is to exploit the “momentum”. Argentina has been able to take advantage of this since the 1980s. The food transition has fueled a greater demand for meat, which is made with soy protein. And the Milanese comes with french fries, which have resulted in a greater consumption of oils. To which was added the arrival of the biodieselwhich spreads all over the world.

A) Yes, soy has had three brilliant decadesaccompanying the growth of world demand. We were leaders in the rate of growth, the best users of new technologiesin particular direct sowing, linked to the fabulous realization of the RR. We generate the largest crushing capacity in the world. It was powered by dredging and marking the watercourse, which we have thanks to investments in plants and ports installed on the banks of the Paraná. We were world leaders in biodiesel until the EU and the US blocked us. The European market has partially recovered, the North American market has not. It protects itself and now develops a gigantic production of Biodiesel HVOrenovating old oil refineries.

But here politics has discovered the “yuyo”. and it was for him. She had one in three ships loaded. Also, discouraging local processing.

Even so, when soy dollars had to be called upon, there they were. Imagine a country that aims to do more than it knows how to do. It sounds unbelievable, but this is not on the agenda.