I am always interested in how other industries or sectors of the economy work compared to our own. All of us moan about how little we make from travel. But we should thank our lucky stars we are not sheep farmers in Patagonia in Argentina. At least our industry, if we can call it an industry, is growing.
Yesterday, I visited a working estancia (sheep farm) on the road between Calafate in southwest Argentina and the Andes region where Lake Argentina and the glaciers are.
The Estancia Anita covers 750 square kilometres and we clocked up 25 miles just driving along one side the farm.
This area of land is home to 25,000 sheep who each produce four kilos of wool every year. So, their total production is 100,000 kilos which they can currently sell at 80 cents a kilo.
This huge estate has a total income of just $80,000 to cover staff, overheads and repairs to miles and miles of fences and all their buildings.
There is also additional income from selling some of the lambs for meat and also income from sheepskins. But in this area generally, the situation is dire. The land is inhospitable and, in some surrounding areas, you need a space equivalent to 14 football pitches to feed one sheep. In the 1950s, there were 7m sheep here and now there’s half that number.
Poor farming practices and short-term profit policies (major tour operators take note) have destroyed the land on which the industry depended by over-grazing and now 30% of farms have just been abandoned.
A way of life is disappearing, a way of life which had its golden age in the 1920s and ’30s when wool prices were three or four times as high as they are now.
Some estancias have turned to tourism – if they are lucky enough to be in the right area – to supplement their income, and others have been sold to the likes of Sylvester Stallone, who have turned them into holiday homes which are only occupied for two or three weeks a year.
This has terrible repercussions on the local labour market and the trend is viewed with some resentment.
Benetton from Italy has been a big buyer apparently – in order to safeguard its wool supplies – and now owns in the region of 10,000 square kilometres. One of the estancies alone covers 250,000 hectares.
I’ve fallen for this area of Patagonia because I love mountains. My greatest disappointment was the fact that we ran out of time and had to visit boring old hotels instead of getting to see the nearby area of Chalten, 156 miles away, where two of the world’s most spectacular mountain peaks are to be found, Fitzroy at 3,405 metres and Cerro Torre at 3,102. Both have sheer rock faces of unimaginable proportions. It would have meant a 6hr return transfer and then a 6hr return hike to the base camp of Fitzroy to view the mountain in its full majesty. Even then it may have been cloudy!
That’s the trouble with being a tour operator, you never get a chance to get the most out of the destinations you feature.
Will I ever have the time to get back here again?
I can always book a trip with Explore Worldwide and have a real holiday here. I had the same guide as Derek Moore when he was setting up their Argentinian programme!