The lack of a rail system for hauling grains from Argentina's next farm frontier in the far north is costing the country millions of tonnes of soya, corn and wheat production every year, prodding the government to jump-start infrastructure projects.
Earlier this month Argentina awarded contracts to lay 416 kilometers of train tracks in the northern provinces of Jujuy and Salta as part of its "Plan Belgrano." It was the most recent of what could be many steps toward revitalising transportation in one of the country's poorest areas.
President Mauricio Macri was elected in 2015, promising to reinvigorate an economy weighed down by currency controls and the previous government's longstanding feud with the key agricultural sector, which stunted output from the world's top exporter of soyameal livestock feed. Areas most neglected were northern provinces including Salta, where trucks rumble slowly over dirt roads.
"We're isolated," said Arnaldo Iriarte, a farmer in the Chaco town of Presidente Roque Saenz Pe?a, 820 kilometers (510 miles) from grains port hub Rosario.
Macri plans to build roads and trains in the north, but the wave of foreign investment he promised has been slow to arrive while spending has been limited by a yawning fiscal deficit. Northern Argentina produced 17.1 million tonnes of grain last season on 6 million hectares of farmland, and is one of few producing areas with more room to expand. A train system could increase planted area to 10 million hectares, said Julio Calzada, an analyst at the Rosario grains exchange.
"The cost (of trucking) is very high for farmers in this area, on top of the fact that yields are lower than they are in the central farm belt," Calzada said. Some 15 percent of Argentina's overall soya, wheat and corn grains output, estimated at about 100 million tonnes last season, comes from northern areas, according to the exchange.
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