At the Don Pancho Farm, Raul Fossati gave us an overall presentation about his family's company "Bilkura S.A. Agropecuria." Bilkura is a Basque word meaning "union," and Agropecuaria literally means "Agropool" in spanish. Raul is the President of the company, and his brother Martin Fossari is the Vice President. We also got to meet the manager of their livestock operation, a man named Christian Marcantonelli.
The Bilkura farming operation consists of 7,852 hectares (19,630 acres) of cropland, 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of cropland used to feed the livestock, and 5,361 hectares (13,403 acres) just dedicated to livestock.
Bilkura S.A. Agropecuria belongs to an organization called CREA. This organization is a group of farmers that work together to help each other with management of their farming operations. It is a way for the farmers to stick together to make them more profitable while the government tries to take away their profitability.
The crop farming operation is quite different than what we are used to in the U.S. Their crop rotations depend on the productive potential of the ground. For example, on the sandier grounds (less productive) their rotation is soybeans, followed by a cover crop, followed by late corn. On the less sandy ground (more productive) the rotation consists of corn, soybeans, sunflower, and either wheat or soybeans. This practice is a relatively new concept of farming, but has been proven very successful in Argentina.
Raul showed us many graphs, charts, and tables in his presentation. His family's company is very data driven, and some of the records we saw dated back to 1989. We got to see the annual rainfall, yield, and profitability of the different crops they planted. For example, their sunflowers averaged 2198 kg/ha, and they averaged around $2000 pesos/hectare of profit. They gave us data like this on all of their crops including corn, sorghum, soybeans, wheat, and barley.
No question we asked was off limits to the managers of the Bilkura operation. They are all very knowledgeable and generous, and I think I speak for all of us students when I say that Argentina is lucky to have them as producers.
Thanks for reading! More posts to come!
Written by Taylor Olson
