Homeward Bound

I am on the flight home having being woken up at 3:30 by the bus company taxi who picks every one up to get to the bus station on time to catch the bus from Rosario to Buenos Aires. I was booked on the 5:30 bus but they decided to pick me up for the 4:30 one. The bus trip took longer than anticipated as someone threw a rock or brick at the bus and smashed a window. They sent for another bus and ¾ of an hour later we were “back on the road again” thanks Willie. I got off ant the airport at 10 o’clock with four hours to kill. I am glad they had a One World Lounge. The flight left at 1400 and we are following the sun so we have not had any night or sleep time. The main reason that I am writing and dribble is lack of sleep but I just saw Antarctica. There were no clouds we could even see the cracks in the ice. I think we saw the ice shelf around the Argentinean section of Antartica. The photo doesn’t do it justice.

3 Day Congress

Sponsors Section

What a fantastic conference, 2800 people with a large percentage of farmers. The whole congress was professionally run. With numbers of farmers attending, the agro-companies were out in force. They all had booths and some were very fancy with young models handing out the pamphlets and running competitions for prizes with the company logos on them. They had 3 sessions running concurrently. The topics ranged from crop nutrition to water footprints. They sessions started at 8:30am in the morning and finished between 6:30 and 8:00pm, but they did have a 2 hour lunch break.

Aerial Gymnists

The basics of ZT were not talked about as ZT is now the standard practice. There were a number of good sessions on crop nutrition and the fate of the different elements in the soil. The whole nutrient cycling system was discussed and it really only starts becoming a large component of available N:P:K after 5-7yrs of ZT. In particular Nitrogen can take longer as the now valued residue, along with the micro-organisms tie up quite a lot of this N.


A new area for benchmarking for me, was a ratio of fertilizer : yield. Fernando Garcia talked about the efficiency of crops in terms of kilograms of N:P:K applied compared to what yield was achieved. As an example he said that 1kg of N produces on average (a horrible term) 34 of Wheat where the same kg produces 144 of Maize.

As ZT has minimal disturbance the Movement of P through the profile is very slow with this eing carried out by roots when they grow and then die. This is a very small amount so it is very important to continue putting the Phosphorous in close proximity to the seed. Over time the P will be quite evenly spread through the top 5-7 centimetres as the fertilizer applied P and the P residue will be released whilst it breaks down.

There were a number of workshops on biotechnology, with Round Ready featuring well. The biotech companies are working on a number of the GM crops with drought resistance a key goal. At present a couple of companies had done this. The crops achieve good yields whilst stressed but in a normal type of season do not achieve higher yields.

The Argentinean farming is being squeezed at present by the government as they want agriculture to subsidize other industries . At present if they grow Wheat they get taxed up to an incredible 70%. This is shown as 35% tax on sales of wheat for export and then 35 cents in the peso income tax. Soybeans are not far behind. They are not even allowed to export their beef. As a result the numbers of cattle has dropped dramatically as the price has dropped sharpely.

Santa Fe & Cordoba States

City Gate for Corral de Bustos

I’ve got 5 days left then home, three will be spent at the AAPRESID congress. I am really looking forward to it. I have had a road trip for a couple of days looking over the area west of Rosario. Even though it has been relatively wet I only say one paddock of lucerne and 2 of wheat. The farmers tell me that they cannot make money on the wheat. The government actually taxes them if it is exported. That may seem a bit screwy but the government may want it internally to feed the population.

I called into another disc seeder manufacturer in Monte Maiz - Agrometal. They make both precision planters and seed drills. They did not have a lot different to the other companies with their current machines, but have some interesting prototypes, which revolves around large machines which fold or swivel for transport. The machines were well built and were typically Argentinean with a coulter then a double disc of identical sizes. All of the Brazilian machines only had coulters as an option, relying on the offset double disc of two sizes. Usually these were 15” & 16”.

Dual Swiveling Drill

For soaking up the local flavours there is a supermarket down the road that sells a lot good wine and a bottle shop 2 minutes walk the other way.It is good here, $4.50 Pesos for a Bottle of Corona ($1.50 Aussie) from the supermarket. They even have a vending machine down stairs with cold beer in it.

In Rosario

I'm back in Argentina with a bus trip from Buenos Aries to Rosario. It was a far better way to travel than car through the ludicrous traffic and mad drivers. I booked a car on line for a couple of days to do a bit of touring before the conference. On the website they were open all weekend 8-8. Today I went to pick the car up and no show, so I went for an expensive guided tour of Rosario by Taxi looking for other hire cars. I’l try again tomorrow.

Back to Argentina for AAPRESID Congress

Well, I thanked Nuffield and GRDC a bit too soon for the wonderful opportunity they have given me. With my travels accruing enough frequent flyer points I am off back to Argentina for the No-Till Congress.


My Spanish is not good enough to listen to the speakers, but after chatting with Dwayne Beck and Agustin Bianchini, I have decided to go. Whilst each speaker is doing their talks, they have three power point displays going on the screens in three different languages; Spanish, Portuguese & Australian. They also have on-the-go translators into those three languages as well. So with the expected crowd of 2000 it will be just like the United Nations.

I am really looking forward to it as I leave this Wednesday for 10 days