2023-07-22 11:00:50
A painting of the 20 hectares that were harvested in the 2022/23 season with singular success. One more agricultural alternative.
The harvest of cotton fiber in San Juan lands ended this week.
The news surprises from several points of view, among them the results obtained by the producers, both in quantity and quality of the type of vegetable obtained, as well as from the addition as a crop to diversify the local agricultural supply, also due to the necessary rotation of soils and the simplicity in its management.
Green Supplement This week he spoke in the field with Leandro López, who with his father Guillermo worked 20 hectares of this industrial crop this season, after timidly starting with 8 hectares in the previous campaign, as a pilot test.
“We planted 10 hectares of cotton with traditional irrigation and another 10 hectares with drip irrigation, to compare the results, evaluate different alternatives in the face of the extreme drought we are experiencing and the management of both, the people, the costs, etc,” explained the young Leandro.
They used the Guaraní variety, which performed well in adaptation and final yield.
“It is our intention in the family business, to extend ourselves to 200 hectares in the next season, if possible. It is that we mechanize staggered sowing and harvesting as well, so that cultivation can be considered very simple in general,” he said.
Cotton cultivation begins in the province of San Juan in the month of October, although technically experts always recommend starting it when the soil temperature is 25 degrees Celsius. “This information is fundamental, said our interviewee, also, it should not be sown too deep, because the seed rots and does not reach the plant.”
The climate and soil conditions lead to obtaining an excellent quality cotton fiber, based largely on existing sanitation. Here there are no heavy rains like in Chaco, Formosa and part of Santiago del Estero, Catamarca and Santa Fe, a vast region where more than 600,000 hectares have been planted in the best campaigns.
“The harvest ended on Monday, July 17, and we did it with a John Deere model 9212 harvesting machine, which allows filling a basket or cage of 2,800 kilos, which are manually assembled in trucks. Next season, we are going to change, and we will do it in rolls of cotton fiber, all mechanized,” he stressed.
The López family assured that this agro-industrial crop is simple, it does not have pests or diseases in our province due to the dry climate, weeds can be easily treated with herbicides, it allows to rotate and clean agronomically suitable lands and strikingly with common gravitational irrigation by furrow it gave the same yields as with pressurized drip irrigation.
Yields per hectare have been very good, from 6,000 to 6,500 kilos of fiber per hectare, much more than in the Greater Chaco Region (where it gives 2,000 to 2,500) and also, here the quality is superior, due to the extremely high health provided by the sun and the beneficial climate.
Hopefully it appears as a new agricultural possibility for San Juan.
Leandro Lopezproducer and Ariel Lucero Reinoso, minister, viewing the cotton from Médano de Oro.
The minister’s visit to the plantations
Agronomist Ariel Lucero Reinoso, Minister of Production and Economic Development was at the Médano de Oro cotton plantation and offered his opinions and comments. “We are always looking for new opportunities for producers, whatever they are. There is a time for learning and knowledge, to get to manage the activity well, and obtain profitability,” he mentioned.
“From Expansión Productiva we care that those who are pioneers of new activities go little by little, growing in area. We do not encourage risking new crops, potentials or technologies in large areas when the details of the new are not fully known,” he pointed out.
He cited corn, due to the demand generated by the farms of different animals, or wheat, due to the mills that need flour and other types of food.
“In this case, the cotton obtained is of very good fiber, with excellent properties for the spinning industry and that encourages linking companies to take the business to a new level, for example, that local farmers rotate their crops with this new proposal and market it, for example, with the Vicunha company, which is located near the fiber-producing area,” he added.
“In addition, from the Provincial Government there are credit tools available to those who want it. We have an office in Calle Miter and Mendoza, where they can advise those interested in the different lines available to date,” he concluded.
High qualityin the cotton obtained.
> A white history of great revolution
At the INTA Pocito headquarters, the first trials of cotton varieties were carried out in the 80s, by the agronomist Antonio Raúl Acosta. Several were tested, giving good results Guazuncho INTA, Porá INTA, Quebracho INTA, Toba INTA and others. Several producers rose to the challenge and so much so that they spread to Cerrillo Barboza, in the Rawson department, and the banks of the San Juan river, in colonies of large extensions of the 25 de Mayo and Sarmiento departments.
In full harvest. John Deere comes to collect the fiber.
Slowly the crop grew, reaching more than 1,000 hectares in the 1990s. A group of producers was formed, called PUMAS (For a Better Agro Sanjuanino), which installed a ginning plant on Route 40, arriving at the entrance to Villa Media Agua. There, with various treatments, the seed was separated from the speck (fiber). San Juan managed to have “dual purpose” cotton, since the seed was added to the fiber for textiles.
The big change came when it went from short, national fibers to long, Peruvian ones. There, the white varieties and those from the Chaco area were left aside by those of the Pyma variety, a Peruvian one, more yellow, with a longer fiber length.
Producers of the stature of Isaías (“Pita”) Goransky, his son Iarón, Sergio Kalieroff and others, played an important role in the development of this activity.
San Juan managed to grow in this activity and then for different reasons, it declined. Perhaps now is the time to resume this new productive alternative.
#cotton #harvest #lands #Médano #Oro #finished #Cuyos #diary