Former Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has announced on Saturday 18^th May she will stand as a vice-presidential candidate in national elections later this year. A surprise move as she was widely expected to be the main challenger to President Mauricio Macri. She was perceived as the biggest threat to Mr Macri, although many remain wary of turning back to the leftist who brought in currency controls and raised taxes on farm exports when she was president.

The leading person on the ticket is Alberto Fernandez, who was chief staff in the government of Kirchner’s late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner. Mr Fernandez retained the office for part of Cristina Kirchner’s first term but he left the post after a steep economic crisis took hold. He was then expressing strong critics against her. He is considered a moderate within the broad Peronist political flank.

Mrs Kirchner decision to pursue the position of second-in-command reflects possible doubts over whether she is best positioned to challenge Macri directly in light of a series of looming corruption trials. 

Mrs Kirchner has been accused of taking bribes in exchange for public work contracts, but she denies. In separate cases, she faces several formal investigations into allegations of bribery, money laundering and criminal association during her administration and that of her husband. The list goes on and on. 

The news astonished some within her own Peronist movement: Former president, Eduardo Duhalde, said he thought it was “a joke” when he first heard.

“Article from Reuters, dated 18/05/19”

Situation/weather: After having faced a very wet period from November to January (2 times more than the historical average for those months-502 mm), the situation was normalised in February and in March.

Forestry activity: Our 750 hectares (ha) forest is planted by 580 ha of trees: we have around 145 ha of eucalyptus, 427 ha of pine trees and 6 ha of grevillea. Minor cuts are forecasted this year given the maturity of the trees. However and until cutes occur, the forest has maintenance and cleaning requirements. Internal maintenance as well as the section bordering roads have been cleaned to prevent from fire have been performed.

Situation/weather: After having faced a very wet January with 290 mm (2 times more than the historical average for the month – please refer to the post made in January), the situation was normalised in February and in March. The level of Santa Lucia River which is bordering the farm went down and soils are drying.

Silage and pasture program: Pastures will improve their density and we will have adequate soil moisture to plant pastures (OAT & Ray-grass) as we could not sow silage corn in November. 208 ha of OAT and 145 ha of Ray-grass are going to be sowed last week of March on the surface originally prepared for corn.

Ray-grass and OAT have both a high protein content to feed cattle and support high loads of animals per hectare. In addition, OAT is also cleaning the soil and improving its structure.

Cattle operation: Our cattle herd (5,839 heads currently) is overall in good shape and taking advantage of pastures densification. We are also starting to sell 400 calves (young steers with 220 kg) to take advantage of increase in market prices. Young female calves are retained to increase and replace mothers’ herd.

In addition, self produced Bradford bulls will also improve internal genetic of the herd while old bulls are going to be sold.

After having faced an intense drought last year at the same period, we are now in the opposite situation: Northeast Argentina and the adjacent parts of Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil have been hit by extensive flooding.

Since the beginning of the year, the area has received about 5 times the long-term expected average rainfall. You can see in previous posts that we had to defer several times sowing of crops due to heavy and frequent rains. Rains have hit wheat harvesting as well as soybean, corn and rice plantations.

“Article from La Nacion, dated 09/01/19”

For us, the situation is the most pronounced in Corrientes and in Salta provinces where we have Tata Cua forest and Curupi Pora farm, and San Bartolo farm respectively. 

While in some part of Corrientes province water is nearly 2 meters deep and displacing the herds of cattle, we have been more preserved so far. We register 424 mm in December vs 190 mm historical average for the month and 247 mm from 01/01 to 13/01/19. As a consequence, we could not sow corn and we will replace this sowing by pasture (ray grass & oat) in March. Stocks of silage are already at low level given the past drought and the current situation may emphasis the situation if we can not sow pasture to feed the herd. To this end, we are already taking some preventing measures for the cattle in Curupi Pora farm (over 5,900 heads) if the situation was to continue and some incidence in the production can be anticipated too.

“Article from Corrientes Tourist office, dated 09/01/19”

At San Bartolo where the climate should be currently hot and dry, we have some plots close to river flooded (excess water coming from the north) and emphasis by unusual rainfalls (from July to December, we have registered +157% compared with the historical average for the same period – only for the 2^nd week of January, we register 105 mm of rains).

Given the situation, we are enhancing sanitary controls of the cattle and taking several preventing measures (over 3,000 heads there). However, we are anticipating some negative effects on meat production as well as for the pregnancy ratio.