The first day we started the morning in Clorinda to do some errands. The most remarkable of the errands was exchanging money. The commercial streets of Clorinda are littered with cambiotistas, money changers. They sit there with their satchels, full of thousands of dollars ($20,000) worth of currency, offering better rates of exchange than the banks. Apparently, it is cheaper to buy Paraguayan Guiranis in Clorinda than in Asuncion. Also, it has not been uncommon for individuals to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of Argentinian pesos in Argentina only to come to Clorinda where they receive a better rate and sell them to the cambiotistas to make a profit -the risk of these endeavors is being robbed. Johnny's guy was robbed a few weeks ago - $20,000 worth was stolen from him plus his motorcylce as he drove home at the end of the day. He luckily carries a small pistol and shot at his robbers, but to no avail. A different world.
In the afternoon we spent time checking on the status of various land projects curretly underway around the property. The first was the road construction being done through the property - the old road to Clorinda was abandoned and it is being rebuilt to improve access to areas of the ranch. Next we went to monitor maintanance work at El Chinchorro, since its owners will be back in the next two weeks. Thereafter we continued on witness the first stages of converting natural grasses to cultivated grasses for improved feeding for the cows.
The grass conversion process is done as follows. First the ground-level plants are burned with a brush fire. This reduces the material content for the tractor to till, and it also makes the palm tree stumps visible, so that they can be avoided to protect the tractor tires and tiller. Next the soil receives its first tilling, then second and then will be seeded on a third passing.
After the grass exchange project, we went to see an irrigation retention project. Draught is a big problem in the province of Formosa, so is access to fresh water. Apparently at Estancia Salvacion, the ground water is not potable because it contains too much sodium - it is practically salt water. During the rainy season, keeping the animals hydrated is not a problem, because they can drink from any of the pools of water that gather after the rains. However, once the dry season begins, these pools dissapear and the animals still need to have access to water. Unable to pump the ground water, the farm has to rely on collecting and distributing rain water throughout the year.
To do this, they have adopted a technology developed in Australia where water reservoirs are strategically dug out around the estancia to collect rain water throughout the year. The earth from the reservoir construction is then piled beside the reservoirs at ground level to construct a holding tank that will allow water to pump to watering stations in the different fields for the animals. There are forty such constructions at Salvacion.
The first reservoir I saw was already complete. The pool holds 1 million litres of rain water. The water is then pumped from the pool to the elevated holding tank by an electric pump. From the holding tank, pipes bring the water to the cement watering stations for the animals. At Salvacion, the soil is impermeable enough that the reservoir and the holding tank are constructed only using soil from the construction site - no cement, no liners.
However, this isn't always possible. On Thursday, our job was to drive one worker five hours to another property, San Miguel, owned by Johnny's brother Santiago in the west of Formosa, and pick up three others that will be returning home to their families for the weekend.
In the west, the land is still very raw. The land is dry, the forest is thick and inedible by animals, water access is a problem, and infrastructure is minimal. To improve the liveability of the area, the government has created a damming system to hold water and redirect it to the town of Zalazar, and has started paving the highway. The paved highway to San Miguel was only inaugurated in the last month!
It would seem that this would be a poor location to ranch cattle since the land literally needs to be torn down and built back up again to make it possible to ranch. But even if you just evaluate the profit of the venture by land value, the fact that the land value has gone from $10/hectare to $1000/hectare in the last 10 years makes the endeavour much more attractive.
Johnny's brother Santiago lives in the south, so Johnny has been contracted to do a lot of the construction at San Miguel. This includes tearing down the forest and planting grasses, building fences, staffing and building the water reservoirs. Three are currently under construction which we were also there to evaluate.
Each of the three reservoirs was at a different stage of construction which was valuable for me to see. One of the biggest problems in the west is the soil doesn't retain water nor its structure very well, which means that the reservoirs need to be lined with an impermeable layer and the holding tanks need to be constructed of cement so they don't collapse. For this reason, the reservoirs need to be very large in order to make their construction worth while. Add to this the fact that it rains half as much as it does at Salvacion, and you have a good number of factors to consider for these projects.
The beginning stages are dragging large shovels behind the tractor to dig away the soil layer by layer. As the tractor circles around to collect more soil, the shovels are emptied beside the reservoir for the holding tank walls or platform. Johnny was there to measure the size of the tanks to ensure they would hold enough water. The first at 60m x 100m x 3 m for a potential 18,000 cubic meters but was likely closer to 12,000 cubic meters was not large enough. (The depth of 3 m was not universal and this tank definitely needed more work.) The problem with this tank was that the soil was so loose it was difficult for the tractor to manoever. I asked if it would be possible to irrigate the soil with light sprinklers to firm up the soil without saturating it - they liked my suggestion and are going to give it a try!
The third at 50m x 80 m x 5 m or 20,000 cubic meters was sufficient. I asked why the last tank was constructed so close to the highway since it would seem to make more sense to be more centrally located on the property, but the rational was they could use the highway as a rain collector to increase water retention during a storm.
After the evaluations, we then drove back the five hours to Salvacion to return the workers to their homes. I think the biggest lesson I have learned shadowing Johnny is that cattle ranching at this scale isn't just about the animals, but instead it is about managing your resources including land, water, grass, plants, animals and human labour to maximize the return on your property.
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