Argentina (Río Negro): Business group produces potatoes in Valle Medio, employing 140 people at full harvest.

In the Middle Valley of Río Negro, 10 kilometers from the town of Luis Beltrán, in the late 1990s, relatives of the Canadian firm McCain purchased 23,000 hectares of land to expand and promote the creation of a paper processing center in the area and the installation of Argentina’s second processing plant for this raw material.

The expansion plan of the world’s largest producer of frozen French fries and the start of this major project would allow for the installation of a large irrigation system supplied with water from the Negro River, as well as offices, machinery sheds, product storage, and a laboratory for quality analysis. This fantastic opportunity provided a source of employment for the area’s residents and the opportunity to utilize the remaining irrigated land acquired through the rotation of other crops.

The purchase of the field had a no less ambitious goal: to develop, over the next few years, a productive area where a factory could be built in the nearby seaside area. This plan didn’t come to fruition, and after years, in 2014, McCain stopped producing potatoes in Luis Beltrán, reducing his workforce by 75% and renting out the field.

In 2020, the field was fully leased by agricultural engineer Martín Pasman, one of the country’s largest potato producers and president of the Argentine subsidiary of Valley, a renowned irrigation systems supplier.

The Pasman Group hired the remaining employees of the McCain company to restart production. The reactivation through this private group generates the same number of permanent jobs as McCain did before 2014, while during the harvest, 140 more jobs (direct and indirect) are created, according to the Río Negro Department of Agriculture.

The favorable environmental conditions, abundant and high-quality water from the Negro River are essential for crop irrigation, and the use of cutting-edge technology, making this revival of potato cultivation in the province an excellent employment opportunity for people in the Middle Valley of our province.

Considering the enormous potential our Middle Valley offers for potato production (this being the most consumed vegetable in our country and around the world), we consider this action essential for generating permanent and rotating jobs through the recovery of the original main project.

Source: Legislators Javier Acevedo, Fernando Frugoni, and Roberta Scavo, who proposed declaring the reactivation of potato production in the Middle Valley of the province of Río Negro by the Pasman Group, which generates permanent and rotating, direct and indirect jobs, of economic, productive, and social interest.