By Chris McCullough
It’s a real ‘topsy turvy’ world producing milk in Argentina at the moment as farmers battle high inflation rates, prolonged drought and a national downturn in demand for dairy foods.
Since the latter half of 2023 dairy production in Argentina has plummeted, which has increased prices to farmers, but on the flipside the costs of raw materials have also increased to a level that is forcing some Argentine dairy farmers out of business.
Reports suggest that milk production in Argentina in the first five months of 2024 was around 14% lower than the same period in 2023.
The situation is quite serious, ultimately causing concern for the Argentine farmers, dairy processors and consumers alike, as well as those employed in the dairy sector.
Buenos Aires
El Rancho farm, owned by Diego Baudrix, is located in Balcarce, in the Buenos Aires province, and has been in his family since the early 1800s.
Diego started with just 25 Argentine Holstein cows back in 1964 milking them by hand, and first upgraded to a mechanised parlour in 1970.
In 2018 the farm invested in eight Lely Astronaut A5 robotic milking units and became the first robotic dairy farm in Argentina.
Today the farm extends to just over 1,000ha with 650 Holstein Montbeliarde cross cows, and is managed by Ignacio Sala, a veterinarian who has worked there for the past six years.
Ignacio said: “Our average yield for cows with over two lactations is around 9,000kg with 3.7% butterfat and 3.7% protein. For first lactation cows the average is 6,800kg with the same milk solids. Cows are visiting the robots on average 2.2 times per day.”
For the past 14 years the farm has been using Montbeliarde bulls to breed out the original Holstein cows, in order to reach a purebred Montbeliarde herd.
Ignacio said: “We have achieved 80% of that goal and now we are starting to use Holstein semen again, along with the Montbeliarde semen. The idea is to maintain a purebred Montebeliarde herd of about 300 cows.
“Half of that herd is going to be bred with Montbeliarde genetics and half with Red Holstein. This way in a couple of years we will be milking 300 pure Montbeliarde cows and 330 Montbeliarde Holstein cross cows.
“The reasoning behind this breeding strategy is because we want to profit from the advantages we have found with the F1 cows, hybrid 50% Holstein and 50% Montebeliarde, over these last few years. The hybrids will be bred with beef semen so as to sustain the herd breeds split.
“Our goal is to have cows well adapted to our production system, so the traits we pay attention to the most are longevity, fertility, rusticity and the ability to eat large amounts of grass,” he added.
Inflation and milk price in Argentina
The cows are grazed outdoors all year round, including the winter time as the rain mostly falls in the spring and summer periods.
Around 670 followers are also on the farm, that graze the pastures, supplemented with silage and concentrates if required. All heifers are bred with artificial insemination (AI) genetics and surplus pregnant heifers are sold each year.
Ignacio added: “In terms of staff numbers, we have five people working with the milking cows, and three more with the dry cows, prepartum cows and calves. One person operates the tractor and mixer wagon, and one works with the heifers.
“Right now we are getting paid around 42 dollar cents per litre. It’s a good price compared with what we were getting few months ago, when it was just 13 dollar cents.
“However, costs are really high at the moment. The milk is sold to a big company called La Serenisima. In most cases, milk price is based on quantity, with very little influence from the milk solids.”
The cows consume 22.5kg of dry matter per day including 12.5kg grass, 6kg ration fed via the robots, and remainder mainly maize silage and alfalfa hay, along with soybean, wheat, and corn if needed.
Ignacio said: “The robots feed each cow 0.215g of ration per kg of milk produced. The amount of grass fed to the cows is not the same during the year. We reach a maximum of 17kg DM during spring and a minimum of 5kg during winter.
“Silage and hay are fed to the cows in the same paddock they are grazing. Only during the coldest month of the year we may have to buffer feed them with fodder.”
In the future, Ignacio intends to make every process on the farm more efficient, to try and boost profits, and without expanding the herd.
He added: “The main goal of the farm is to create a system as resilient as possible, a system with the ability to overcome climatic, political and economic changes with few negative impacts and with the ability to recover fast.
“This is the reason why we aim to feed the cows with as much grass as possible because we strongly believe it is the most stable resource we have, and also the cheapest one.
“At the same time, by milking 50/50 crossbred cows we intend to increase milk production and total milk solids. We expect our heifers to go from 6,800kg of milk per lactation to 7,800kg of milk, and our cows to reach 10,000kg of milk per lactation.
“Simultaneously, we are increasing our stock rate to 2.2 cows per hectare. That means we will be producing around 1,600kg of milk solids per hectare and per year,” Ignacio said.
