ARGENTINA-CATTLE HERD DROPS.
The national cattle herd has dropped from 55 million head of cattle to 52 million head in the last year, as many breeding cows have been slaughtered along with large numbers of dairy cows.
Threw were over 1.5 million cattle lost to the drought, which was in part caused by the laziness and incompetence of the Argentine Gentlemen absentee farmers, who had no got the common sense to take the cattle to the meat works, then at lease get the value of the manufacturing cow carcass.
90% of the absentee farmers have cattle herds of around 500 head of beef cows, mainly Angus or Hereford, except in the north of the country where the Brahman and Nelore are favored in the tropical climates.
However farmers are only getting the same price for cattle, as they were four years ago which is genuine reason for complaint.
The biggest problem in meat production in the Argentine, is the slaughter of cattle with a live weight of 300-350 kilos, vealers or big suck calves, which are slaughtered for the domestic market, which last year utilized 84% of cattle produced.
While indeed this makes the most magnificent beef to eat, the cattle if kept to double the weight would more than double the beef production.
The average live weight in Europe is 675 kilos and the USA 673 kilos, while Argentina is 330 kilos.
83 % of the farmers in Argentina, are hobby farmers living off the rent from the land or interest from family investments.
They reside in the best suburbs of the city of Buenos Aires, and have no comprehension of how to farm for a living.
These farmers are totally oblivious to the massive profit margins the meat plants are working on, or the fact that they could be increasing their incomes by 100% by increasing the slaughter weight of their animals.
Paraguay and Uruguay are now exporting more beef than Argentina, while they only have cattle herds of 12 million cattle, as the beef consumption per capita was 83.5 kilos in 2008 in Argentina.
Compared with the European farmers there is a time warp of 40 years in Argentina, making matters worse is the famous last words "We have always done it this way".
The tradition of the absentee farmers goes back to the early part of the last century, when the English, Italian and Spanish land owners, would only appear once a year at harvest time and round up time to collect cheques to be banked overseas.
Today the wealthy farmers do exactly the same while residing on the north shore of the River Plate in Buenos Aires.
To see these farmers on road blocks driving vehicle that cost more than two suburban houses, does little to generate public sympathy.
