New farming technologies and strong international demand for grains have transformed Argentine agriculture in recent decades—and are sapping nutrients from the country’s soils at an unsustainable pace, experts contend. Virtually all here agree that monoculture crop farming, particularly involving soybeans, has led to fast-expanding areas of cultivation, growing yields and impressive gains in foreign-exchange earnings and export-related government revenues. At the same time, though, there’s a deepening sense among experts in both the public and private sectors that this cultivation is degrading soils irreversibly as nutrients are extracted and not replaced. Such sentiment has been particularly strong since December of last year, when the state-run National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA) released a study of the 2006-07 growing season. The agency... [Log in to read more]