Fersam Agroindustrial, in Entre Ríos, is in charge of Fersam Agroindustrial, in Entre Ríos. It produces peas, lupine, rapeseed, and corn seeds, with irrigation and selective herbicide application using drones, certified to international standards.
Juan Pablo Carrera (37) is an agricultural production engineer who graduated from UCA with a master’s in Business Administration. He is currently the CEO of Fersam Agroindustrial, which owns 18,130 hectares in Entre Ríos. There, for three years, he has been developing an intensive agricultural-livestock approach, with irrigation and traditional and niche crops certified with international standards. All within a framework of innovation and added value but with sustainable criteria. In the livestock area, he develops a complete cycle with alfalfa-based pastures used with rotational grazing in three-hectare plots with drinking troughs in each of them through a permanent underground installation.
The company has a farm between Gualeguay and Victoria, on Route 11, south of Entre Ríos, in one of the best areas of the province. It belongs to an Italian family that a few years ago passed the business on to one of their sons, Guglielmo, 34, also a master’s degree holder in BA.
Guglielmo and Juan Pablo sought to make a disruptive change of direction and move from traditional farming activities, after 27 years of the same manager, to a new scheme. They thought of turning it into an agricultural company that would earn more by diversifying and adding technology and value in a sustainable environment. To do so, they developed a strategic plan that meant a very big cultural change in the company.
The field has a storage facility with a capacity of 25,000 tons, which rotates twice a year because the field produces 50,000 tons of grain and seeks to continue growing. Currently, 12,200 hectares are dedicated to agriculture (soybeans, corn, sorghum, wheat and specialities), but this is quickly becoming more than 16,000 due to the overlapping of areas between grain, soybeans and other secondary crops. In addition, there are 2,200 hectares in rotation of agriculture with pastures and 4,000 hectares dedicated exclusively to livestock.
Specialties, irrigation and selective applications
Among the specialities, they have developed the cultivation of yellow peas (900 hectares), lupine, camelina and rapeseed. The peas are produced through an agreement with Element Food, which provides the seed and buys all the production for export. “We have been developing peas for four years, and their price is increasing, and today it reaches 275-280 USD per ton. The yield that can be obtained is around 3000 kilos per hectare,” says Carrera.
“Initially, peas were intended as a service crop, to help keep the soil covered all year round, but it was quickly seen that they generate income and allow the costs of seed (280 kilos per hectare are used) and inoculant to be easily paid,” he says.
The pea cycle is shorter than wheat’s and allows for sowing late soybeans 15 days before those following wheat. Another possibility is to sow late corn, which takes advantage of the nitrogen contribution that peas leave in the soil. For weed control, various herbicides are used, and the harvest is direct, although at a slower speed than for other crops.
They have also planted lupine in partnership with the same company. Thanks to genetic improvement, this crop contains 60% protein, twice as much as soybeans. It yields 1,800 to 2,000 kilos per hectare, with an early harvest. Lupine is exported and consumed in gastronomy or by athletes as a protein concentrate. It is also used for animal feed.
They developed an agreement with Bunge to cultivate camelina, an oilseed used to make jet fuel. It has the advantage of its ultra-short cycle, 100 to 120 days, which allows it to be harvested before peas. “It is a species with a taproot, which perforates the hard layers of the soil and improves its structure,” Carreras points out. They are also carrying out rapeseed cultivation with another agreement with Bunge in search of diversification and added value to the agricultural surface.
“With all niche crops, the aim is to intensify agriculture and allow one hectare to be equivalent to 1.37 hectares due to the overlapping species on the same surface. Intensification in one’s area avoids renting fields from third parties,” he says. The international CRS and EPA standards have certified agricultural production for three years.
In recent campaigns, the company incorporated irrigation into its agricultural plans. This tool allows for less dependence on the weather, stabilizing the flow of business and developing another profitable additional activity: corn seed production. To do this, they signed an agreement with Bayer that allowed them to reach a yield of 14.7 tons per hectare, which gave them an additional income of 600 dollars per hectare per year on the planted surface. The company also incorporated other businesses, such as producing soybean and wheat seeds for Don Mario.
By incorporating irrigation, the productivity and quality required for the seed are ensured. In addition, Fersam Agroindustrial not only produces the seed but also processes it and delivers it in big bags to the seed companies, with the intention of becoming increasingly integrated into the value chain.
In addition to irrigation, the company has incorporated numerous cutting-edge technologies: the agricultural surface is landscaped, and the data is processed with Field View, which is complemented with a sampling of each georeferenced environment, which allows for perfecting the data every year and making exact decisions about fertilization, plant density per hectare, etc. John Deere machinery is connected to the Operation Center, which allows monitoring of how it is working in real-time and taking corrective actions if necessary.
Some time ago, they incorporated the selective application of phytosanitary products. Initially, this was done through flights with a hired drone, which produced data processed on a platform, after which a prescription was made for the sprayer. This technology allowed more than 60% of product savings compared to conventional applications.
More recently, they purchased a drone with a 50-litre tank. The drone flies around, producing images that are processed on the platform and then used to perform the applications. This technology allows for less use of agrochemicals, greater operational efficiency, and more environmentally sustainable approaches.
The spray drone can complement sprayers. It is prescribed a route and loaded with the product and the battery. It flies until it consumes the tank’s contents and returns to the origin to refuel and recharge the battery.
The drone is autonomous: once the route, drop size and working width are loaded, it starts spraying where it left off on the previous flight. It has several advantages: it can apply products after a rainy day when it is not possible to travel with the sprayer, it does not step on the crops, it can eliminate weeds from the sides of the fences and apply phytosanitary products on the contour lines of the field. It can also spray products in weed proliferation hotspots and distribute fertilizers. In the livestock area, it is useful for quickly applying carminatives in pasture plots.
Regarding marketing, “Since we have a significant grain production, we sell directly for export, with a price differential of 1% compared to current prices,” Carrera points out.
Marketing
“We received assistance from AZ-Group in deciding when to sell and drawing up a strategy to cover the grains produced. We hold monthly meetings with the technicians where we analyse the commercial position at any given time and design the strategy taking into account what is happening in the international market, in the internal sphere and in the financial needs of the company; this work is as important or more important than high production efficiency,” highlights Juan Pablo.
For many years, the “Las Cabezas” ranch had the Hereford as its dominant breed, but in recent years, it began to convert to Angus with Pure-Controlled bulls and artificial insemination in the herds. In the area of the Clé stream—historically a breeding area—4,300 cows give birth to calves that are reared and fattened to develop a complete cycle, which determines that there are permanently 8,500 to 10,000 heads of cattle in the field.
The rearing is done with alfalfa-based pastures in rotational grazing in daily plots of three hectares and rotation with agriculture. The water reaches each plot with pipes that run under the ground with whips for the drip units so that the farm does not waste water excessively. The finishing is in four-hectare stakes with shade and silage for self-consumption for 90 days, which allows the production of 450-kilo steers for export.
Calves gain more than 600 grams daily during rearing to produce a finished young bull. The entire farm has electronic trailers, combined with electronic scales, which allow monitoring the weight gain of each animal and comparing the performance of each bull’s offspring.
Source: : Carlos Marin Moreno
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