Last week I was able to observe a meeting of the local Argentinian ranchers. Apparently in Argentina, the government has divided the ranchers of the country into various groups. These groups are supposed to meet regularly at one another's ranches as a way of sharing and policing the activities that are going on at the various properties. A government official, a agricultural scientist, is supposed to participate in these meetings as well as a way of sharing and collecting information to then report back to Buenos Aires. In this way, the cattle industry can quickly and efficiently share and distribute new technologies and information across the country.
Groups are generally supposed consist of 8 - 12 ranching groups, however the meeting group is stil relatively new here and consists of only 3 - 4 groups. The meeting is a day long affair. We met at 8:30 am for introductions and some coffee. We then were given a folder with maps and statistics on production at the ranch, Estancia Bouvier. The manager discussed long term goals as well as past obstacles. For example, Estancia Bouvier is located along the Paraguay River. At first I thought this was a huge advantage for irrigation and drinking water purposes, but was told that in fact it was a huge problem because the river gave thieves easy access to steal cows. When the animals are being stolen at a rate of 2/week, which annually adds up to losses of over $100,000 you have a problem. For this reason, an entire section on the river is not used by the ranch in order to keep the cattle from being stolen.
Interesting statistics for me were the following. The ranch own 52.000 hectares but only uses 47.500 hectares. They have 33 employees - 3 administratin, 19 cattle workers and 11 maintenance people. In the last five years, they have had a pregancy rate of 75% of their herd, from which they experienced a further 20% loss to delivery. This means that on average only 60% of the cows are delivering calves, which is very low. Miscarriage losses of 20% are very high I am told, and business wise, only replicating just over half of your herd doesn't seem very effective.
However, I learned that the reproduction system is much different at Bouvier. There they only have one mating season, from November until April. The purpose I was told is to simplify the process and reduce labour, which it does, however the returns and pregnancy success is much lower.
Other interesting numbers were the weight of meat leaving the farm - in 2006 the statistic was 29.6 kg/ha whereas in 2011 the weight was only 18.5 kg/ha. The total weights leaving the farm in those years were 1.407.017 kg (2006) and 877.969 (2011); this number includes both cows and calves. The last interesting number is the carrying capacity of the land - on average the land required per animal is 2.18 ha. The ranch has approximately 22,000 animals at any one time.
The main topic of conversation for the day was grass. Specifically tangola grass. This grass is a hybrid of tanner grass and pia grass. It contains high nutritional value and replicates itself from plant cuttings rather than seeds. Above you can see one of these plants at one month old.
Today was the first day that I really got down and examinted the grasses in the fields. The pastures contain an abundance of variety and accordingly, a rancher needs to be able to identify which grasses are supporting and which are hindering his success. Above is a native legume species that fixes nitrogen into the soil but has little greenery content for consumption by the animals.
The scientist that accompanied us for the day is an expert on grasses in Paraguay and the Northern region of Argentina. He spoke freely of the replanting initiatives that were taking place in ranches in his area of expertise and how to go about doing the replantings economically. First, you have to identify if your land is high-land or low-land - though Formosa seems completely flat, after being here for a few weeks I have started to appreciate the differences in water content in the soil and vegetation in depressed areas and elevated areas. It is vital to grow the right grass in the right conditions, or your are wasting your time and money. For this reason, we examined maps of Bouvier that provided inventories of the soil types, elevation conditions and moisture content of the ranch.
Here you can clearly see the difference between the front field and the back field in color and consistency. The grass in the foreground is pangola (different than tangola). When the tractors tilled the soil to plant seed, it provided an opportunity for the pangola already in the field to proliferate. The back field is untilled and still natural grasses.
Part of the tour included visiting Salvacion to the place where the tangola for Bouvier was collected. Tangola needs low land and higher water content. It is a competitive plant and will grow as a mat to cover the ground and outshade all other plants, or if it is growing where other plants are already established it will grow vertically to compete for the sun.
Other than a different breeding regime, it was neat to learn that Bouvier also supplements the diets of their animals differently. In fact, they buy cotton seed from the many cotton producers in teh region, and feed the seed to the calves on these nylon feeding troughs. The seed is bought in bulk at $125 US/tonne, but the seed needs to be picked up and bagged by Bouvier. At our farm, we supplement the calves diet by saving planted fields for them when they are first weaned from their mothers. This provides higher nutrition to the animals than putting them into natural grass pastures.
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