Agriculture in Argentina

Agriculture is one of the bases of Argentina's economy.

Argentine agriculture is relatively capital intensive, today providing about 7% of all employment, and, even during its period of dominance around 1900, accounting for no more than a third of all labor. Having accounted for nearly 20% of GDP as late as 1959, it adds, directly, less than 10% today.

Agricultural goods, whether raw or processed earn over half of Argentina's foreign exchange and arguably remain an indispensable pillar of the country's social progress and economic prosperity. An estimated 10-15% of Argentine farmland is foreign owned.

One fourth of Argentine exports of about US$86 billion in 2011 were composed of unprocessed agricultural primary goods, mainly soybeans, wheat and maize. A further one third were composed of processed agricultural products, such as animal feed, flour and vegetable oils. The national governmental organization in charge of overseeing agriculture is the Secretariat of Agriculture, Cattle Farming, Fishing and Food (Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Pesca y Alimentos, SAGPyA).

Since its formal organization as a national entity in the second half of the 17th century, the country followed an agricultural and export model of development with a large concentration of crops in the fertile Pampas, particularly in and around Buenos Aires Province, as well as in the littoral of the Paraná and Uruguay Rivers. Largely limited to stock-raising activities and centered on the export of cattle hides and wool, Argentine agriculture languished during the colonial era and well into the 19th century.

The need for intensive agriculture was recognized as early as 1776. Aside from the yerba mate harvest in the northeast, attempts to develop it suffered setbacks due to internal strife and lack of skill and machinery. The development of a cohesive state after 1852 led to the 1868 creation of Argentina's first Institute of Agronomy and the 1875 arrival of the first intact grain shipment from Argentina to Great Britain sparked a wave of local investment in cultivation and silos and British investment in railways and finance.

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