URQUIZA, Argentina (AP) — The ground crackles as Guillermo Cuitino walks across dry farmland that should be green and lush this time of year. He grabs a soy plant and easily disintegrates its leaves with his hands.

“This year’s drought was extreme,” the agricultural engineer said this week at the farm where he works in Urquiza, a town about 230 kilometers (143 miles) from Argentina’s capital.

Cuitino normally has a policy of not walking on cultivated land, but everything is so dry now that there is absolutely nothing to damage — even weeds aren’t growing.

That scene is repeated in farms across Argentina, where harvesting should be in full swing but months of dry weather has ruined. Farmers are scrambleing to make ends meet, and a sharp drop in expected revenue from exported farm products will deal a severe blow to Argentina’s shaky economy.

“This drought is unprecedented,” farmer Martín Sturla said, standing in the middle of his dustry fields in nearby San Antonio de Areco. “It’s Dantesque. No one has seen anything like it.”

The situation is particularly dire because Argentina had already been suffering two years of unusually dry weather. “The last two years were bad, but we always had some rain events that allowed us to get by,” Cuitino said.
Even experts are having trouble coming to terms with the crisis.

“There are no words to describe the impact of a campaign marked by all-time historical records: a deficit of rainfall for the third consecutive year in the summer, persistent heat waves until well into March, and agricultural frosts as late as October 2022 and as early as February 2023,” said a recent report by the Rosario Board of Trade that has sharply cut estimates for this year’s harvest.

In its latest weekly report, the Buenos Aires Grains Exchange said this year’s soybean production would be around 25 million tons, down 44% from the average for the last five cycles. Total wheat production, meanwhile, is forecast at 36 million tons, a 31% drop from the previous year.

Taking into account the soybean, wheat and corn harvest, which make up 87% of Argentina’s grain production, losses will reach an estimated $14.14 billion, according to the Rosario Board of Trade. The Regional Consortium of Agricultural Experimentation said in a recent report that the current condition will lead to almost $20.5 billion in export losses.

“What does happen due to climate change is that the heat waves become more frequent and more severe,” Sorensson said. That means “the soil dries more quickly,” he said.