The trip in photos

A photo view of the SDSU Ag International Study Tour of 

Argentina and Uruguay, Dec 29, 2014 - Jan 10, 2015

Photos from Argentina

One of our many farm stops and our bus that toured us though the countryside 

Group enjoying a great meal before the start of the Tango show. (Right front)..Ty Littau...thanks to Ty for joining the group as a translator, guide and friend.

Traditional Argentine saddle

All students got a chance to ride a true Argentine horse, here Mik Sich, is helped by Pedro of  La Maria on the horse and everyone enjoyed this opportunity to try out riding on a traditional saddle.

In order to see the fields and cattle we rode in pickups many times to get a closer view. 

Raul Fossati grilling up our New Year's Eve Supper on a typical outdoor grill common to homes in South America who spend a lot of time outside due to the warm weather. The Fossati family.  What great hosts to share their New Year's Eve with and learn about Argentine family culture. Our new extended family. 

And our New Year's Day hosts the Caseslla family and on the far right Alejandro, our farm tour organizer, interpreter and friend forever. We wish you all the best and can't thank you enough for all you did, Alejandro. Hope to see you soon. 

   We seen many yearling steers and heifer in backgrounding settings, prior to them entering a feedlot at 850 lbs.  Brian De Stroet, testing out the working facilities. All working chutes were wooden and required a lot of manual labor compared to our American systems. The group visited the largest feedlot in the country, a mid-sized feedyard, a purebred cattle operation (Brangus) and also a typical family farm.

 

 

 

Above: Students learned a lot about rotational grazing systems used for many of the backgrounding operations. (Right) Buyers viewing cattle at the largest livestock auction in the world, bidding occurs from catwalk. 

 

Sunflowers were also a very popular crop, both edible and non-edible and at a few farms we were told they were the most profitable crop.

Below: The group seen corn and soybeans at many stages during the trip and learned about how the farmers do a Corn 1 and Corn 2 planting to spread out risk.

Visiting the Argentina Board of Trade and watching the trade action at the close of trade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buenos Aires skyline from the Ferry as the students look back on their way to Uruguay. While in Buenos Aires the students visited the Board of Trade, The U.S. Embassy, the Argentina Angus Association, a historical city tour and a traditional Tango Show.

Uruguay Sites and Memories

 A PIECE OF SOUTH DAKOTA IN 

SOUTH AMERICA

 Santiago and Joaquin Narbaiz from Uruguay purchased this sprayer over the internet and shipped it by barge to South America. This sprayer came from Madison, South Dakota about 40 miles from SDSU Campus....it's a small world.

Taylor Olson and Justin Vanemann bring their in class agronomy learning to the field, converting crop yields, fertilizer rates, etc., from their SDSU classes and farms to how crops compare in Uruguay. With South America on the metric system the students converted the information back to acres almost instantly to be able to put it on the same scale as U.S. as you will see many times in the blog write ups.

Special thanks to our Uruguay hosts....in just one day we made friends and a connection for a lifetime.




We would like to hear from our blog viewers...if you have any questions or comments feel free to include them in the comment box, they will be shared with the students. We really thank you for following our trip.  And thank you to the administration of SDSU for their support to allow us to learn about global agriculture through international experience trips such as this.

The Students of ABS 482 - 2014

Visit to U.S. Embassy in Argentina with photos

  SDSU Ag Class 482 Students at the United States Embassy based in Argentina.



On the last day in Buenos Aires, (Friday, January 9th)  we go the opportunity to visit the United States Embassy in Argentina, which was a privilege because we were the first group from SDSU to get to visit. We got to talk with the Foreign Agricultural Services (FAS), which is the international arm of the USDA. Their office in Argentina also covers Paraguay and Uruguay as well. Our professor Dr. Gordon had a contact at the Embassy and sent a request and fortunately our request was approved. They commented Argentina is one of three countries including USA and Brazil will provide the food to feed the world and the increasing food demands. Argentina alone is expected to be able to feed 400 million people.

With all the different crops Argentina produces, soybeans are king. They are the 3^rd largest producer but are the largest exporter of soybean meal and oil. They are the 5^th largest producer of corn and the 4^th largest exporter. They only make up 2% of the entire world’s wheat production and the 7^th largest exporter. Considering they have big export taxes and exports quotas this information was impressive. In the result of the export quotas there is a lack of fighting over the surplus export qualities so it keeps prices much lower for producers. So the quotas are something that could be looked at to eliminate or to soften up the restriction. 

Beef is a big revenue producer in Argentina but they are really limited for exportation. Only 5-10% of production is exported and EU is the main market. Argentina has been shut off from exporting beef to the U.S. for 10 years due to Foot and Mouth Disease which was found in Argentina in 2003. There are 51.7 million head of beef cattle in Argentina and 80% of them are located in the La Pampa area, (which is the area we visited), 85% of the beef production comes from the La Pampa region. 

Poultry has been increasing in popularity, which has raised the demand. They have excellent sanitary conditions and have shown record highs in production, domestic consumption and exports. Pork production is getting close to being to the level to provide enough for internal demand which would then decrease their  their imports of pork from Brazil. 

Some of their smaller production markets are fruits, citrus products, and wine. Fruits including apples and pears are mostly located in the west and mostly all exported. They are the largest producer of lemons in the world, this production in located in the northern and east regions. Lastly they are known for their delicious wine. The production happens in the Andes areas and 40% of the production is exported to the United States. 

The relationship Argentina has with the U.S isn’t the strongest because we only make up 4% of the exports.  We don’t have any formal trade agreements with them and we continue to have WTO cases against each other over several products. We are however important partners in the Ag research areas, including biotech and bio fuels.

There was very extensive security at the Embassy and several screenings and security check points we had to pass through before we even got to the meeting room for our visit and no photos were allowed inside or outside the building. We all had to be pre-screened several weeks ahead as well to be able to visit the Embassy.

This was a good final visit because throughout the trip we had developed many questions as we gained more awareness of Argentina Agriculture. So it was a great opportunity to visit with the Embassy staff to get the direct facts and statistics of agriculture in Argentina and Uruguay and to help provide us with answers or at least give us a better understanding on many of the issues impacting agriculture. 

One question that had not been clearly answered was about Argentina’s currency situation. The international currency exchange is right around 8.45 pesos to 1 US dollar. On the streets of Buenos Aries there is what is known as a Blue Market and the exchange rate is up to 14 pesos to our 1 US dollar. This has a huge effect on importing and exporting goods and services into the country. This makes it rather difficult for the farmers and ranchers to have much of a secure market place. The current government of Argentina wants to keep the costs of food cheaper by not allowing foreign competition or to at least keep it limited and to generate government revenue. The low prices and high taxes make it very difficult for the farmers to do well. Farmers have had to adapt to different practices in agriculture to make ends meet. 

We had a very warm welcome at the Embassy and it was nice to be able to openly ask questions. 

Written by Riley Canham and Josh Terveen 

Although we were not allowed take photos during our visit  due to security reasons, our hosts at the Embassy were kind enough to allow us to take a group photo and send it to us. We appreciate their cooperation on this so the students have this great memory. 

 

Students and our Embassy hosts.   

Far left: Melinda Sallyards, Ag Counselor gave a powerpoint presentation to the group and (second from right) Kenneth Joseph, Agricultural Specialist of U.S. Embassy, (who worked with Dr. Gordon to organize our visit to the Embassy).