Argentina's "Soybean King" wants to copy landless production model in China

Argentina's agribusiness giant owner Gustavo Grobocopatel, better known as the "Soybean King," said he wants to replicate his landless production model network in China.

Grobocopatel, president of his family's agroindustrial group Los Grobo, which earns 700 million U.S. dollars a year, said Argentina and China are complementary in agriproduction.

"Argentina is a food producer. With 40 million inhabitants, it produces enough food for 400 million and it can likely produce enough for 800 million people," he said during a recent interview with Xinhua.

While farming is Los Grobo's business, Grobocopatel and his family are not land owners. Instead they lease the land or work with farmers to cultivate crops, and provide financing, technical or marketing know-how, seeds or other input.

"The 21st-century world is a world of flows. It doesn't matter who owns the land, capital and labor force, but how you manage the land, capital and labor," he said.

Land can be leased, labor can be outsourced and capital can be borrowed, he noted.

Grobocopatel said his agricultural paradigm relies less on ownership of land and machinery, and more on knowledge and technological advance at the service of a network of producers and suppliers working together.

"This model can be applied to China," he said.

To help replicate the landless production network abroad, he said they have developed a line of consulting and transferring know-how to other governments, which is going to generate more opportunities for the farmers of the 21st century.

"I would like to work in China in this area starting now," said Grobocopatel, who has already promoted the concept in Colombia, Mexico and Albania.

Each year Los Grobo produces more than 300,000 tons of soybeans, 100,000 tons of wheat, 100,000 tons of corn, and at least 10,000 tons of sunflower seeds.

It recently launched a new enterprise to put space technology and robotics at the service of agriculture to attain better information on soils, crops and meteorology. Endi