After viewing a presentation about Argentina’s economy, it was time to dive into the Agribusiness portion of Argentina’s economy. The speaker’s name was Ivan and his past work on a large farm gives him enough experience to teach about the work today. Agribusiness includes the different crops, grains and different machinery involved in producing them. It accounts for 60% of Argentina’s total exports. Agribusiness is focused around energy and efficiency, or producing the most amount of product with as little resources as possible.
We then learned about the different meats consumed around the world and what the future of plant-based meats will look like. China accounts for 1/3 of all meat consumed in the world, and are slowly converting to fish as the meat of the future. Fish is the most efficient to breed, as it maintains a 1.3 to 1.0 energy efficiency ratio. This ratio determines the amount needed to breed the fish, compared to the output provided.
Finally, we were taught the typical farming style in Argentina and how it varies compared particularly to the United States. Farms are seen as investments, where outside sources own them and lease them out to farmers. These farmers rent the land, machinery and tools before paying the owner back at the time of harvest. Risk is avoided in these farms through a partnership (two or more individuals sharing ownership to decrease risk), and climate risk is avoided through geographic diversification. As an investor, limiting your risk, will allow for your farmers to pay back their debts fully at harvest.
This presentation was very well put together and informative in many ways. The information presented is applicable to almost all fields of study and should prove to very helpful in the future. I can’t wait to see how useful the lessons we learned today will be in various classes back at Bryant. All in all, the class throughly enjoyed this presentation and look forward to our group dinner at the steakhouse tonight!
Hasta luego!
– Derek Knobloch
SIE 2020, Latin America 