“Neither Loans nor Subsidies”: Innovative Fund Seeks to Repopulate Patagonia’s Countryside

A new fund in Argentina's Santa Cruz province is offering rural producers something different from conventional state assistance: neither traditional loans nor subsidies, but a revolving pool of productive capital.

The Patagonia Rural Sustainable Foundation presented the 10-year plan in Río Gallegos to producers and rural residents. Its goal is to reverse the depopulation of the countryside by helping restore farms and create working capital. Producer Sandro Heinze, one of the fund's promoters, said the foundation was created to recover and repopulate Santa Cruz, and, if ambitious, Patagonia as a whole.

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The foundation was created to generate working capital, recover and repopulate the province of Santa Cruz and, if we are ambitious, Patagonia.

The fund would convert capital contributions into recoverable productive assets, including animals, infrastructure, water, forage, supplies, equipment and working capital. Those assets would generate production and income. An agreed portion would then return to the foundation, allowing it to finance new projects.

“Heinze said the money would be given to producers to repopulate their fields with breeding stock, fences or facilities. Producers would repay what they received under agreed terms and schedules, allowing the same system to support other ranchers. He is trying to recover his family's inherited farm, which lost all its livestock in the early 1990s after the Hudson volcano eruption and a harsh winter.

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Neither loans nor subsidies. It will be a fund given to producers so they can begin repopulating their fields, whether with breeding stock, fences or facilities.

The foundation says production, conservation, science and social development can reinforce one another. Its plan calls for at least 150 rural families to return within three years and for the regional economy to diversify through regenerative ranching, tourism, renewable energy and the knowledge economy.

The scheme relies on returning biological capital. If a producer receives 500 sheep, for example, that producer would return 500 sheep after a grace period, and the animals would then go to other ranchers. The foundation's proposed Biological Capital Bank, or Breeding Stock Bank, would track births, losses, replacements and returns. Heinze said financing could come from carbon credits, the Inter-American Development Bank or another source.

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For example, if a producer is given 500 sheep, they must return 500 sheep after a grace period, and those sheep will be given to other ranchers.