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Crunch time in Argentina

Published: Friday, 30 May 2008, 8:40PM

Argentina is one of the larders of the world. It has a population approaching 40 million, but it produces enough food to feed 300 million.

For more than a decade now, Argentinean agriculture has been turning from beef herds roaming the vast expanses of the pampas, to growing maize and especially soybeans in some of the most intensive agricultural industries on earth.

The move has been very profitable it is too; if any nation’s economy has benefited in the past five years from rising food prices, it is Argentina’s.

The move to biofuels is simple another piece of good news here. From soybeans they make biodiesel, from maize they make ethanol which is a bio substitute for petrol.

And if the world wants to use these fuels in their cars, the value of Argentine exports rise still further. The problem is that the price of soy or maize for food rises with it.

In his video blog James Mates explains the problems that these price rises have created for Argentine farmers and consumers alike.