INTERVIEW FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE April 2022 43 vate work regarding antibiotic-free production. Also, CAENA organizes the National Animal Feed Congress in Argentina every two years and the last one in 2021 focused on sustainability, carbon and environmental footprint, putting these things in agenda for the next years of the market evolution. We think all the items mentioned are important but as we´ve been working in the last several years; we are making lots of progress and improvements in anti-biotic free production, feed safety and animal welfare. What would you like to say about CAENA’s approach to the problems experienced in the industry, its solution proposals or its efforts to solve these problems? In the last 5 years, CAENA has made several changes in its structure to give the industry and their associates a better and more professional service, including faster and better information, solution to their day-to-day problems, and lots of connections to make their access to stakeholders easier than they can make separately (this also includes better government relationship). The COVID-19 made changes in everyone’s life and CAENA wasn’t the exception. It turned the chamber more agile, more digital and actually with a faster response on daily proposals and problems. Our main efforts today are focused on local regulations (working together with Regulatory Affairs - SENASA in Argentina) that could help us to make international commerce easier, of course without compromising our sanitary status. We are seeking to make more improvements in this area to accomplish a growth of the industry in the future, to capture the mentioned global opportunities. Finally, can we talk about the supply of feed raw materials and feed prices? Raw material supply and feed prices have recently become a big problem for farmers in many countries. What is the situation in your country? The COVID-19 pandemic and Ukraine/Russia war context didn’t help at all to international commerce, the main consequences were: growing costs of logistics, less vessels, less and more expensive containers and actually an increase of raw material prices that elevates substantially production costs and competitiveness. This affects in two ways: Locally, because it increases our costs in dollars while the final product is paid in local currency after 2 or 3 months and with the increasing global and local inflation compromises profitability and produces decapitalization without good financial and stock management. And in a commercial sense, it cannot give us clarity on when to expect our product and how much the price will be. This uncertainty generates fluctuations that can lead to important losses if they are not well managed. What would you like to add about the animal nutrition industry in your country? Are there any other messages that you want to give about global animal nutrition industry? Argentina has very interesting opportunities in some specified products such as pet food, aquaculture and equine (also other specific products and additives) because we have a very good sanitary condition, very good processes and very good supplies that can make a difference in other markets. Our main problem remains in local assets such as local taxes for export that leaves us out of many competitive markets, and also lack of long term policies and also lack of credit for production. If we keep seeing the agro-industrial industry in Argentina as the main income it will only destroy opportunities. To produce responsibly is not enough if we don´t have common objectives. We hope as a country that we can have this chance to allow this industry to keep growing as the world would need more from our assets. Argentina is in a very good position to take care of this opportunity, but need to have more long term aligned policies.
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