From Bariloche, producers are advancing in a historic regional agreement with Chile to integrate meat, forage, genetics, and processing.

A group of producers from Argentine Patagonia and southern Chile have been working for over two years on an initiative that could become an unprecedented commercial and sanitary agreement for the region. The scheme under discussion includes the exchange of beef and lamb, genetics, live animals, forage, hospitality, processing on the Chilean side, and the provision of machinery and inputs adapted to the Patagonian topography. This weekend’s Rural Expo in Bariloche will be the venue where technical and commercial aspects will be fine-tuned to finalize a document that will then be presented to the national authorities of both countries. The project is based on a concrete productive complementarity between both sides of the mountain range. From Bariloche and the Andean region, the aim is to access forage, concentrates, and hospitality schemes at much shorter distances than currently, as well as the possibility of processing sheep in Chile, where there are closer slaughterhouses. On ...