Seen from the sky, the soybean field presents like lines of baldness, vast sparse sections. At ground level, we understand: yellowed, blackened, dried plants. Among the green ones, Jaime Mestre snatches some that he reviews: "this one... Zero pods, this one... zero, this one... three pods when she should have at least 8 times more".

Corn? Not much better. The harvesters swallow the ranks behind Jaime, an agricultural engineer from the Lima sector, in the "wet pampas", the fertile heart of Argentina 110 km northwest of Buenos Aires. But for which ears?

At random, he grabs two of them and strips. Atrophied, as if stopped in their development with a tiny proportion --5% to 10% perhaps--, of normally formed grains. Diagnosis? "A huge drought, with over a thermal stress of several days of very high temperatures, at the time of fertilization," summarizes for AFP the engineer, who assures personally to have "never seen this" in 21 years of harvest.

In 94 years, in fact. "The worst drought since 1929": this is what Argentine President Alberto Fernandez assured Joe Biden at the end of March at the White House, asking for his support from international credit organizations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the first place, for leniency in the face of Argentina's deadlines.

It is still early for final balance sheets, but for Argentina, the agro-exporter par excellence, with soybeans, wheat and corn in the lead, harvest forecasts 35 and 50% lower than last year converge on spectacular losses.

Plans of soybeans dried and blackened by drought and high temperatures in Baradero, Buenos Aires province, March 30, 2023 © Luis ROBAYO / AFP

"About 15 billion dollars in export earnings, and counting the multiplier effect of the agro sector, nearly 20 billion in total losses for the economy, almost 3 points of GDP," Tomas Rodriguez Zurro, an economist at the Rosario Stock Exchange, Argentina's reference place for agribusiness, told AFP.

"The harvest is not worth diesel"

Bad alignment of planet for the 3rd economy of Latin America, crying lack of foreign exchange reserves, facing chronic inflation, accentuated for a year by the impact of the war in Ukraine, and now by a third consecutive year of drought. When the cyclical phenomenon "La Niña" usually inflicts only one, at the limit two.

"God is no longer Peronist," the pro-opposition daily Clarin quipped this week, referring to an expression sometimes heard in the government camp in the past, when good harvests, or favorable world soybean prices, coincided with an executive from this political movement - like the current center-left coalition.

For the third time in a year, Economy Minister Sergio Massa announced Wednesday a preferential and temporary exchange rate - Argentina has an official rate and several parallels - both to encourage the soybean sector to boost its exports (and therefore tax revenues), and to compensate for the losses of some 69,000 affected producers. This is the "agro dollar".

Agricultural engineer Jaime Mestre shows an ear of maize affected by drought and high temperatures in a field in Baradero, Buenos Aires province, March 30, 2023 © Luis ROBAYO / AFP

As Fernandez secured a promise of Biden's "support" to credit agencies, Massa returned from Washington, where he also spoke drought at the IMF, with a disbursement of a new tranche of $5.3 billion in aid, as part of the Buenos Aires debt refinancing plan to the Fund — a $44 billion loan granted in 2018.

Donors are not letting Argentina go - even if two rating agencies have just lowered its debt rating. But in the fields around Lima, entire plots are abandoned, which will not be harvested. "They are not worth the cost of diesel from the harvester," says Jaime Mestre.

And the concern is already there for "second" crops, with wheat "expected to sow within a month but without the moisture required in the soil to seed".

Aerial view of a maize harvesting machine in a field in Baradero, Buenos Aires province, on March 30, 2023 © Luis ROBAYO / AFP

Unless the worst is the social impact, which will be delayed, "on the small villages in the interior of the country where the decline in economic (agricultural) activity will be felt the most".

© 2023 AFP