Agriculture Minister Norberto Yauhar (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.)

The first shipment of Argentine corn sold to China arrived to its destination, after passing the technical controls imposed by the Asian country. The arrival of the 60,000-tonne shipment marks the opening of one of the largest markets in the world for Argentine corn.

The genetically-modified corn, which had left the country almost two months ago, was sold by agricultural company Bunge and purchased by state-owned Chinese company COFCO Group, which in turn sold it to two companies that will use it to produce food for chickens and pigs. Before being allowed into the country, it had to pass a strict battery of tests conducted by the AQSIQ, China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine). However, the executive director of Maizar, an organisation that represents corn producers, said that “any purchase Chine makes from now on will already have all the documentation in place,” thus speeding up the process.

Argentine Agriculture Minister Norberto Yauhar stated yesterday that “it is a great opportunity for the local market. For many years we have worked to gain access to the Chinese market. Today we did it with a cargo of very high quality corn”.

The Argentine Ministry of Agriculture and AQSIQ signed the respective phytosanitary protocols in February 2012, thus allowing the exporting of corn from Argentina to China.

For Argentine companies, access to the Chinese market means dealing with the third largest corn importer in the world -after Japan and South Korea- which is already a major soy buyer in the country. Argentine produce will compete with corn from the US, Ukraine, Brazil, and South Africa.

China imported 5,2m tonnes of corn in 2012, at a cost of US$1,683m, 98% from the US.

According to British agriculture website farminguk.com, statistics for 2008 reveal that Argentina is exporting less and less beef.

Argentina is forecast to export 550,000 tonnes of beef this year and, as a result, drops from the world’s third biggest exporter of beef to number five on the list.

The primary reasons for this reduction are twofold. Firstly, Argentina’s consumption of its own beef has increased to an enormous 85%. Perhaps more importantly, though, is the emergence of soy as a popular product to farm.

Soy has become the crop of choice for many farmers due to its diverse uses ranging from pig, chicken and cattle feed exported to the EU and China to new forms of bio-fuels.

The so-called ‘soy-boom’ is already a point of controversy in Argentina, and other South American countries, as it encourages deforestation and can destroy the soil as Marty Hanna, founder of Pura Vida, told The Argentina Independent: “Basically Argentina is slowly turning their other crop lands into soy production for the money. The problem is soy ruins the soil and basically, after a certain number of years, makes it infertile.”

However, the increase in soy farming, which has more than doubled its cultivation area over the last ten years in South America according to the World Wildlife fund’s study ‘Managing the Soy Boom: Two scenarios of soy production expansion in South America’, has caused a reduction in the number of cattle farmed and, therefore, lowered Argentina’s beef exports.

Of the countries that are ahead of Argentina in the beef exportation stakes are Brazil exports 2.2m tonnes a year, Australia 1.36m and India, despite the cow being a sacred being in the eyes of the 800m Hindus that live there, 800,000 tonnes a year.