The national deputies Luis Picat y Martin Ardohain presented a project to declare an agricultural emergency due to the corn leafhopper (dalbulus Maidis), an insect vector of the Spiroplasma kunkeli bacteria, a lethal disease for cereal, which is affecting the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Chaco, Catamarca, Tucumán, Salta , Córdoba, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and La Pampa.
As Picat explained to Clarin Rural, the agricultural emergency, like any climate emergency, has three stages. The first, he continued, is the declaration, which refers to some tax benefits, such as the payment of Income tax. The second is zoning, which is to establish, through satellite images, the affected surface. And the third, depending on the accession of each province, the payment of the rural real estate tax can be exempted or postponed.
Furthermore, in the project they ask to urge the National Government and the affected provincial governments to work in a coordinated manner to reduce the impact and advance of the pest and request that the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, together with the technical teams of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), establish comprehensive and mandatory management protocols or for producers, taking into account regional differences.
“Although this disease is not new in the north of our country, having registered cases in the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Chaco and Corrientes, this year the novelty was its vertiginous growth and spread to other provinces such as Córdoba, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and recently cases were recorded in La Pampa, setting off all the alarms due to its strong impact on the corn crop and the damage caused,” they explained in the work. “According to specialists, we are facing the most abundant population detected in the last 10 years,” the text added.
The Buenos Aires Cereal Exchange cut the corn harvest by 2.5 million tons product of the advance of the leafhopper and the heat wave. Now, a production of 54 million tons is expected. But, based on producers’ estimates, the damage will be even greater.
Continuing with the data of the same entity, it is estimated that The potential area with some significant damage could amount to 360 thousand hectares, covering 27 departments.
“According to the latest data obtained, the most affected areas are the center of Santa Fe, the northeast of Córdoba and the west of Entre Ríos, with peaks in the severity of the disease and the main cuts in production projections. In fact, in “In these regions there are lots that will not be able to be harvested directly, completely lost,” the project stated.
The planthopper has a very small size, reaching no more than 3 to 4 mm in length, and persistently and propagatively transmits the bacteria Spiroplasma kunkelii, which causes a disease that has shown a recurrent incidence in the north of the country and in the south. from Brazil. But the plague expanded in this last campaign to several productive regions.