With Messi at the bank – 02/09/2019

President Mauricio Macri has asked the secretary of the agribusiness sector, Luis Miguel Etchevehere, to activate the HB4 wheat registry, which has drought tolerance genes and glufosinate ammonium herbicide. The event had remained in the air without definition, in a time frame supported by the criterion that "markets do not want transgenic wheat".

Macri had met Federico Trucco, CEO of Bioceres, the company that had developed the event created by the team of Raquel Chan, researcher at the Universidad del Litoral and Conicet. Convinced that it was an international success and that the role of the "facilitating State" should be fulfilled, thus enabling the image of the country to be installed in the world with a scientific and technological capacity of avant-garde, Macri asked Etchevehere of Federico Trucco (whom he had never received) at a meeting at La Rosada, in his presence.

Look also

Clarin Bulletins

Harvest news | The strengths of the agri-food industry and regional economies.

Every Tuesday.

Trucco received the invitation and asked to be accompanied by referees, which was refused. He was only allowed to attend that he and another founder of Bioceres, Gustavo Grobocopatel. What a surprise they had when they saw that Etchevehere was not only accompanied by his chief of staff, Santiago del Solar, the president of INTA Juan Balbin and the secretary at the same time. Agriculture, Guillermo Bernaudo. In addition, he took the president of Ciara-Cec (exporters), the owner of the federation of shareholders, Fernando Rivara, the president of the federation of millers, Diego Ciffarelli, and David Hughes, owner of Argentrigo. All, although nuanced, recognized the opponents of the new event. Trucco lived as an ambush.

Lino Barañao, Secretary of Science and Technology, was not invited to do the same. O Leo Sarquís, Minister of Agri-Food of the province of Buenos Aires, the main province of the country where wheat is grown, where stress tolerance and the tool of glufosinate for the control of ryegrbad are essential. No one from Aapresid, where the benefits of biotechnology are very clear for the sustainable management of high productivity.

Look also

Of course, the scale was totally inclined. All raised the same point: the "customers" did not want transgenic wheat, which nobody in the world wanted yet, and that would compromise the Argentine wheat exports.

"They made it difficult for you," Macri told Trucco. He and Grobocopatel have disarmed the argument of commercial fear. They reminded Etchevehere that in 1996 many had opposed the approval of RR soybeans. The same idea had been installed: that customers do not buy transgenic soybeans. We produced 15 million tonnes of soybeans, today we are 60. "Imagine what would have happened if they had paid attention to those who were against," they said.

They argued that there was always a reaction to the unknown, especially when they affected interests. They recalled that in the commercial sector, they had put pressure on silobolsa. And this, in particular, some manufacturers had opposed the release of transgenic maize, as this would affect their business of exporting Flint Corn Pods to the European Union. In 2000, we produced 12 million tonnes of corn. We will now reach a record of 45. 99% are transgenic.

But the question was to find a way. Macri, to desserts, asked Etchevee that in a period of 60 days, among all, and without forgetting the difficulties, the same creative ones and those who find that the use of this technology is disseminated, by ratifying the Priority objective of the Argentine agro-industrial chain at the forefront of the world. I do not want to miss the opportunity to show that Argentina, in the field of science and biotechnology, is playing first. But today, he has Messi at the bank