The Protein Sovereignty Index

Country assessment

Argentina

We assess Argentina as Resilient (78.2). Land and production impose no binding constraint here; the constraint is the combination of imported crop inputs, a state whose financial fragility still shows up in food prices, and an affordability picture that is genuinely mixed rather than uniformly weak. That mix is stark: a country whose daily protein supply of 121.5 grams per person ranks with the best fed on earth[1] recorded 33.8 per cent of its population in moderate or severe food insecurity in 2023,[27] while the share unable to afford even a minimum food basket fell from an 18.1 per cent crisis peak in early 2024 to 6.3 per cent by late 2025, the fastest such recovery in the region.[56]

The protein system

Argentina runs one of the largest protein surpluses of any nation. Domestic protein supply stands at 121.5 g per person per day against a world average of 92.2,[1] of which 75.6 g is animal protein.[2] Per-capita consumption of animal protein reached 116 kg in 2025, among the world's top three: roughly 49 kg of beef, 48 kg of poultry and 19 kg of pork.[3] Behind that table sits an export machine. Beef production of about 3.08 million tonnes carcass weight equivalent supplies a domestic market of 2.34 million tonnes, with exports forecast at 800,000 tonnes in 2026.[3] Chicken meat production runs at 2.525 million tonnes, 156,000 tonnes of it exported in 2025.[7] Milk output reached 11.618 billion litres in 2025, 9.7 per cent above 2024 and the highest since 2015,[9] with 65 per cent of the additional supply in early 2026 going abroad.[10] The 2025/26 season delivered records across the grain complex: 27.8 million tonnes of wheat with 19 million exported, and 61 million tonnes of corn with 41 million exported.[4] A soybean crop of 50 million tonnes fed a 43.5 million tonne crush[6] behind 30 million tonnes of soybean meal exports, the largest of any country.[5] Fisheries add a modest layer: 138,000 tonnes of Illex squid, 147,000 tonnes of frozen shrimp and 107,000 tonnes of hake, within USD 1.91 billion of fish and seafood exports in 2024.[11]

The system's shape matters for sovereignty. Feed is entirely domestic, and the cattle herd of 50.92 million head grazes rain-fed pasture with grain finishing.[12][3] Nearly everything the protein chain needs above the soil line is produced at home; much of what goes into the soil is imported, and the peso the system trades in is chronically unstable.

Durable domestic capacity: 90

Quantitative score 90, no adjustment applied

Argentina's capacity score is high. Every major protein category runs at or far beyond self-sufficiency, and the surplus comes from a base that is neither irrigation-mined nor feed-import-dependent. Water stress is 10.5 per cent of available freshwater resources,[14] the great majority of cropping is rain-fed, and the cattle system's foundation is pasture. Sustainability caveats exist: the official registry closed 2025 at 50.92 million head, down 704,000 on the year and stalled for three years under drought and high costs,[12] and the 2022/23 drought showed that a major crop can halve in a bad year, soybean production fell from 43.3 to 21 million tonnes.[24] Even in that season domestic protein consumption was never rationed; the loss landed on exports and the exchequer, and output recovered to a record 50 million tonnes within two seasons.[6] Durability is the test that matters here: does output recover after a shock, or does the base keep shrinking. Argentina passes it in a way a shrinking sown area or occupied farmland would not: mined, shelled or contracting farmland is degradation that is not recovering, which Argentina's drought was not. We score capacity 90 with no adjustment, holding it short of the low 90s for the herd contraction and the volatility inherent in a rain-fed system.

Resource headroom: 85

Quantitative score 88, adjusted down 3 points

Argentina's headroom is deep. Arable land per person is 0.887 hectares, more than five times the world average of 0.172;[13] renewable internal freshwater runs at 6,431 cubic metres per person per year;[15] and aquaculture is negligible, so there is no wild-fishmeal draw. The clearest measure of slack is the export surplus: a population of 45.9 million ships 41 million tonnes of corn[4] and 30 million tonnes of soybean meal[5] abroad in a normal year, feed redirectable to domestic animal production many times over before any constraint bound. Yield headroom is also real rather than speculative: the record 2025/26 wheat crop rested on a 46 per cent yield jump to 4.28 tonnes per hectare from 2.92, on better varieties, heavier fertilisation and a wet winter.[4]

Tested against capital access, water banking and demonstrated expansion history, the finding is that Argentina's headroom is genuinely mobilisable. Two of the country's largest banks, Santander and Grupo Financiero Galicia, now run a joint agricultural lending platform that financed USD 1.1 billion in 2025, double 2024, and is projected at USD 1.5 billion in 2026, with the sector's own estimate of annual agricultural investment rising from USD 16 billion to USD 22 billion as export tariffs fall.[44] The expansion history is already on the record: soybean area grew from under 5 million hectares in 1992/93 to about 20 million hectares by 2015/16,[45] a financed, multi-decade mobilisation. Irrigation equips only about 4 per cent of arable land,[46] low in isolation, but this does not signal unmobilisable headroom the way it would elsewhere: Argentina's yield gains, including the 46 per cent wheat yield jump cited above, run through rain-fed intensification rather than irrigation. We deduct 3 points on a different and narrower ground: Argentina's cropping frontier has historically expanded through deforestation in the Gran Chaco, and nutrient balances on the Pampas are negative because fertiliser application persistently runs below the nutrients exported in grain.[16][18] Some of the apparent headroom would be purchased with an eroding base, taking the pillar from 88 to 85.

Import exposure: 94

Quantitative score 94, no adjustment applied

Argentina imports almost no protein, and what little it does import arrives from Mercosur neighbours without touching a maritime chokepoint. The country is a structural net exporter in beef, poultry, dairy, wheat, corn and soy products simultaneously.[3][4][5][7][9] The most notable recent import flow is competitively priced beef from Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay entering the domestic market as local cattle prices hit records: 23,779 tonnes carcass weight equivalent in 2025, forecast to reach a record 60,000 tonnes in 2026 as exporters prioritise higher-value foreign sales.[3] At under 3 per cent of domestic beef consumption, that is price arbitrage inside a customs union, lowering rather than raising supply risk. Supplier concentration and chokepoint metrics, decisive for most entities, are close to irrelevant here.

Pressure-tested for hidden staple dependence, one real exception surfaces, and it qualifies the picture rather than reversing it. The 2022/23 drought that halved the soybean harvest forced a record 10.4 million tonnes of soybean imports in calendar 2023, 5.8 million tonnes from Paraguay and 4.1 million tonnes from Brazil, just to keep the crushing industry running, and even so 54 per cent of crush capacity sat idle that year.[47] That is an input to the export-processing chain rather than protein arriving as finished food, so it is scored under capacity and upstream rather than here, but it shows the near-zero exposure claim holds in normal-to-good harvests and not in a severe drought year. Pork is a genuine, if small, net import position, a trade deficit of USD 16.5 million of imports against USD 5.8 million of exports in the first half of 2024, as Brazilian pork and chicken filled a gap left by herd liquidation.[48] Argentina's near-zero import exposure is real rather than an artefact of scale. None of Argentina's exceptions approaches significant scale in a normal year. We score 94: no entity scores 100, and niche channels for pork and processed inputs exist.

Upstream dependence: 67

Quantitative score 67, no adjustment applied

Upstream is where Argentine sovereignty thins. Feed, the input that dominates most entities' upstream risk, is fully domestic, and energy has swung decisively sovereign: Vaca Muerta shale took oil production to a record monthly average of 859,500 barrels per day in October 2025,[21] and the energy trade balance closed 2025 at a record surplus of USD 7.815 billion, on exports of USD 11.086 billion against imports of USD 3.271 billion.[20] Cattle genetics are a domestic strength, and foot-and-mouth vaccination is supplied by a capable national veterinary industry.

The crop platform that generates the feed and export surplus is another matter. Fifty-six per cent of the fertiliser Argentine agriculture uses is imported, principally from Morocco, China, the United States and Peru; national production of 1.7 million tonnes stands against seasonal use of 4.8 million tonnes in 2024/25.[16] Phosphates are almost wholly imported because domestic deposits are low grade. Nitrogen is only partly covered by Profertil's single large plant at Bahia Blanca, whose 1.3 million tonnes of urea capacity meets about 60 per cent of national urea consumption.[17] Crop protection is similarly externalised: China and Brazil together supplied 48 per cent of Argentina's USD 688 million of pesticide imports in 2024, the United States a further 16 per cent,[11] and the peer-reviewed account of the sector places Brazil, China and India as the leading origins of registered active ingredients.[18] Effectively the entire soybean area, 16.3 million hectares in MY2022, is planted to glyphosate-tolerant varieties whose chemistry Argentina does not synthesise at scale.[19]

The seed sector carries a further, smaller layer of the same dependence. A 1970s law let growers replant soybean seed without paying royalties for decades; Monsanto, later Bayer, secured only a partial workaround from 2016, testing cargoes at export point to collect technology fees, and Argentina still fields at most two or three serious domestic soy genetics programmes against a minimum of thirty in Brazil, leaving Argentine soybean yields about 17 per cent below Brazil and the United States.[49] A reform drive under way in 2024/25 would accede Argentina to the 1991 UPOV convention and let Syngenta, Corteva and Bayer collect royalties directly, formalising a payment stream to largely foreign genetics.[49] Bayer itself suspended its Argentine soybean seed and biotechnology business entirely from the 2021/22 season,[50] and hybrid corn, unlike open-pollinated soy, carries a built-in annual repurchase requirement that keeps growers tied to a small number of mostly foreign trait providers. Genuine domestic capability sits alongside this: Bioceres' HB4 drought-tolerant wheat, bred with an Argentine-discovered sunflower gene, was the world's first genetically engineered wheat approved anywhere, cleared for cultivation in 2020 and commercial planting in 2022/23, and the United States deregulated the same Argentine-bred trait for its own wheat crop in August 2024,[51][52] making Argentina a genetics exporter in this one case rather than only an importer. A sustained interruption of fertiliser and agrochemical trade would leave protein consumption intact for years on pasture and existing soil fertility, while steadily degrading the yields on which the export surplus and the food system's economics rest. We score 67 with no adjustment.

Access and affordability: 64

Quantitative score 60, adjusted up 4 points

FAO has not published a country-level estimate of the share of Argentines unable to afford a healthy diet since 2017.[32] Its own methodology note explains why: the purchasing-power-parity conversion needed to bring the series forward cannot capture the peso's collapse, so Argentina is one of two countries excluded from post-2017 country tables entirely. A 2017 reading cannot ground a 2026 assessment of a country whose currency has since lost most of its value, so this pillar is built instead from the current-window evidence available.

The nearest FAO-comparable measure of population-level food-access hardship is the food insecurity experience scale, which found 33.8 per cent of Argentines in moderate or severe food insecurity in 2023,[27] a figure that carries the pillar's unaffordability-equivalent weight in place of the unavailable affordability figure. Prevalence of undernourishment is 3.4 per cent in 2023, among the lowest in Latin America.[33] Measured child stunting was 8.7 per cent in the country's most recent national nutrition survey, unremarkable on its own,[34] but the modelled series has since risen from 8.2 per cent in 2018 to 10.7 per cent in 2024, a deterioration the survey point conceals,[43] and a Salta province study found stunting at 18 per cent among indigenous children of the east-south zone against 1.9 per cent among Creole children of the Calchaqui valleys, a gap the national average hides.[35] Domestic food price volatility is the sharpest constraint the data record directly and this pillar's weakest component: food inflation reached 308.3 per cent year on year in March 2024 and, even after a deceleration with few peacetime precedents, still stood at 34.4 per cent in June 2026.[36] Physical access is comparatively strong, 92.2 per cent of the population is urban and the country carries no conflict-affected region,[37] though the regional disparity above persists.

Set against that unaffordability-equivalent reading, a genuinely improving series sits alongside it. INDEC's own indigence line, the share of the population unable to afford even the minimum food basket, a narrower and cheaper basket than a healthy diet, peaked at 18.1 per cent in the first half of 2024 and had fallen to 6.3 per cent by the second half of 2025, the lowest reading since the comparable series began, as national poverty fell over the same window from 52.9 to 28.2 per cent.[56] That recovery is measured, not projected, and it happened entirely after the 2023 food-insecurity reading that underpins the unaffordability-equivalent component, so a reading two years stale is more likely a ceiling on the current figure than a floor. Weighted across its five components, unaffordability-equivalent, undernourishment, stunting, price volatility and physical access, the indicators put the pillar at 60; we add 4 points for the documented recovery after the 2023 reading that the indicators cannot otherwise see, taking the pillar from 60 to 64.

Shock endurance: 58

Quantitative score 53, adjusted up 5 points

Endurance is the pillar on which Argentina diverges most sharply from its physical endowment, and the reason it sits below the Sovereign line. Physical endurance is exceptional. The 2022/23 drought, the worst in almost a century, proved the domestic supply floor: soybean production halved to 21 million tonnes from 43.3 million[24] and the government estimated economy-wide losses of about USD 20 billion, almost three per cent of GDP,[25] yet no protein rationing occurred and production rebounded to records within two seasons.[4]

Financial endurance is a genuine weakness, though not a uniform one. Net international reserves missed the end-December 2025 IMF programme floor by USD 10 billion, with about USD 4.8 billion rebuilt since.[22] Inflation, though falling steeply, was still 31.5 per cent in 2025, after 117.8 per cent in 2024 and 211.4 per cent in 2023.[23] Such a state holds no strategic food reserve and has little fiscal room to shield households when food prices track export parity through a weak peso. The transmission is visible: retail beef prices rose 57 per cent in 2025 against 31.5 per cent general inflation, with pork up 29 per cent and poultry 19 per cent;[3] per-capita beef consumption fell to 44.5 kg annualised to April 2026 from 49.5 kg a year earlier, its lowest in two decades;[26] poverty reached 52.9 per cent in the first half of 2024, affecting about 25 million people,[29] before falling to 31.6 per cent by mid-2025[28] and 28.2 per cent by the second half of 2025, the lowest reading since early 2018;[56] and moderate or severe food insecurity stood at 33.8 per cent.[27] In a country this productive, protein insecurity is a purchasing-power phenomenon, and the methodology's definition of sovereignty includes affordability.

The crisis-purchasing-power component we score explicitly within this pillar is more mixed than the reserve shortfall alone suggests. Total reserves covered 4.05 months of imports in 2025, up from 2.46 months in 2023, above the classic three-month adequacy threshold even if thin next to well-reserved peers.[38] Market access is the remaining constraint, though a narrowing one: sovereign spreads fell to 444 basis points on 11 June 2026, the lowest since May 2018, after rating upgrades from Fitch in May and Standard and Poor's in June,[39] and to 421 points by early July,[41] down from a peak of about 1,460 points in early September 2025.[42] Argentina had nonetheless placed no international bond as of July 2026, and the finance secretariat has played down an immediate return on the grounds that 2026 and 2027 maturities are already covered from other sources.[41] Untested market access is weaker than demonstrated market access when a country needs to outbid on world food markets at short notice. Social protection has, by contrast, demonstrated it can scale: the 2020 Ingreso Familiar de Emergencia reached 7.8 million people by the end of April and almost 9 million by June, at a fiscal cost of 1.14 per cent of GDP.[40]

Two further vulnerabilities are logistical and biological. Nearly 80 per cent of agricultural exports leave through the Parana-Paraguay waterway and the Rosario terminals on it;[6] the 2021 low-water episode pushed exporter logistics costs up 300 per cent on the Rosario Grain Exchange's estimate.[30] That is a revenue chokepoint rather than a supply one, and export revenue funds the imported inputs and the state's thin buffers. Highly pathogenic avian influenza was confirmed at a commercial farm in Buenos Aires province on 26 August 2025, triggering suspensions by China, Chile and others, with regionalisation agreements covering markets that accounted for at least 60 per cent of 2024 poultry trade.[7]

Policy preparedness carries a documented history this assessment prices explicitly. Twice in the past two decades the state has reached for direct trade intervention during a domestic price shock. In 2008, Resolution 125's sliding-scale export tax, which would have pushed the soybean rate toward 44 per cent, triggered a nationwide farm strike running from 11 March to the government's revocation on 18 July, after the Senate rejected the measure 37 to 36 on Vice President Julio Cobos's tie-breaking vote; milk was dumped and chicks were culled for lack of feed during the standoff.[53] In May 2021, with beef prices up 65.3 per cent against 46.3 per cent general inflation, the government imposed a 30-day export ban reserving supply for the domestic market; the Rosario exchange found it did not deliver the intended price relief, and producers halted sales for nine days in protest.[54][55] Both episodes cut two ways. Each shows the state willing and legally able to redirect export product back to domestic consumers during a shock, the rerouting capacity this pillar rewards, and 2008 shows the legislature capable of reversing a damaging policy within months. Each also shows a genuine, repeatable, self-inflicted supply disruption, a real cost weighed against the credit given elsewhere in this pillar for adaptive capacity. On balance the two effects offset, and the current administration has explicitly reversed course, cutting export taxes in three rounds since mid-2025 with a phased path to 15 per cent by December 2028 set in law.

The indicators put this pillar at 53, reflecting adequate reserve cover and proven scale-up capacity alongside continued exclusion from capital markets; we add 5 points because stock-to-use statistics understate a surplus exporter's true buffer: the standing pipeline of grain awaiting export and the practice of farmers holding soybeans in silo bags as an inflation hedge amount to a de facto national stockpile measured in months of domestic consumption, and the substitution of poultry and pork for beef through the 2025 price shock[3] shows that dietary flexibility working in practice, taking the pillar from 53 to 58.

Trajectory

The direction of travel is positive on most fronts. Export taxes have been cut in three rounds under the current administration: the soybean rate fell from 33 to 26 per cent on 30 July 2025, with beef and poultry duties down from 6.75 to 5 per cent and grains from 12 to 9.5 per cent;[31] by June 2026 the soybean rate stood at 24 per cent and soy by-products at 22.5 per cent, and Decree 423/2026 set a phased path to 21 per cent by December 2027 and 15 per cent by December 2028, alongside an immediate cut in wheat and barley duties from 7.5 to 5.5 per cent.[6] Lower retenciones attack the index's core distortion in Argentina, the wedge between world and farmgate prices that has suppressed investment for two decades. The supply response is visible in record wheat, corn and milk output,[4][9] with milk projected at about 12 million tonnes in 2026.[8] Trade access is widening simultaneously: China's 2026 country-specific beef quota of 511,000 tonnes, a temporary additional 80,000 tonne low-duty United States allocation, and the EU-Mercosur agreement signed in mid-January 2026 and ratified by Argentina in February.[3] A 25-year concession for dredging the Parana-Paraguay waterway was awarded in June 2026 to a Jan De Nul and Servimagnus consortium, which the government expects to cut logistics costs by 13.5 per cent.[6]

Two levers matter most from here. Upward: completed reserve rebuilding and two further years of disinflation (endurance); domestic nitrogen expansion converting Vaca Muerta gas into fertiliser, for which the September 2025 transfer of Nutrien's 50 per cent stake in Profertil to an Adecoagro-led vehicle is a possible precondition[17] (upstream); continued herd rebuilding towards the forecast 52.5 million head at end-2026.[3] Downward: a macro relapse that reignites export controls, the Argentine reflex that scored production capacity so cheaply from 2006 to 2015; another multi-year La Nina drought; or avian influenza establishing itself in the industrial poultry belt. Argentina's protein sovereignty problem is monetary rather than agricultural.

Sources

  1. Food Balance Sheets: protein supply quantity, Argentina and World · FAO (FAOSTAT), via Our World in Data (2026 (data 2023))
  2. Food Balance Sheets: protein supply from animal and plant foods, Argentina · FAO (FAOSTAT), via Our World in Data (2026 (data 2023))
  3. Livestock and Products Semi-annual, Buenos Aires (AR2026-0004), 9 March 2026 · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026)
  4. Grain and Feed Annual, Buenos Aires (AR2026-0006), 20 April 2026 · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026)
  5. Oilseeds and Products Annual, Buenos Aires (AR2026-0005), 9 April 2026 · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026)
  6. Oilseeds and Products Update, Buenos Aires (AR2026-0009), 6 July 2026 · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2026)
  7. Poultry and Products Annual, Buenos Aires (AR2025-0015), 19 September 2025 · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2025)
  8. Dairy and Products Annual, Buenos Aires (AR2025-0017), 19 December 2025 · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2025)
  9. Evolucion de la produccion al mes de diciembre 2025 (milk production, calendar year 2025) · OCLA (Observatorio de la Cadena Lactea Argentina) (2026)
  10. Argentina's dairy exports absorb majority of rising milk supply (OCLA data, January to May 2026) · AgriMoon (2026)
  11. Trade statistics, reporter Argentina, 2024 (HS chapter 03 and lines 030743, 030617, 030366, 030474; HS 3808 imports) · UN Comtrade (2026 (data 2024))
  12. Existencias de bovinos al 31 de diciembre de 2025 (SIGSA, SENASA) · Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (SAGyP), Argentina (2026)
  13. Arable land per capita, Argentina and World (AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC) · World Bank World Development Indicators (FAOSTAT basis) (2023)
  14. Water stress: freshwater withdrawal as a proportion of available freshwater resources, Argentina (ER.H2O.FWST.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators (FAO AQUASTAT basis) (2022)
  15. Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita, Argentina (ER.H2O.INTR.PC) · World Bank World Development Indicators (FAO AQUASTAT basis) (2022)
  16. Economic report on the Argentine fertiliser market, 2024/25 season (FAO, CIAFA and SAGyP data), reported 29 October 2025 · Bolsa de Cereales de Cordoba, via Valor Agregado Agro (2025)
  17. Adecoagro to Acquire Best in Class Urea Producer (Profertil capacity and Nutrien stake), 15 September 2025 · Adecoagro S.A. investor relations (2025)
  18. Dependent Articulation in the Global Pesticide Complex: Argentina's Agrochemical Industry After the Generics Market Revolution (doi 10.1111/joac.70073) · Journal of Agrarian Change (Wiley) (2026)
  19. Agricultural Biotechnology Annual, Buenos Aires (AR2023-0016), 13 December 2023 · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2023)
  20. Argentina registro un superavit energetico record en 2025 (INDEC trade data), 21 January 2026 · Infobae (2026)
  21. Argentina ends record year in oil production and energy surplus thanks to Vaca Muerta, 26 December 2025 · Buenos Aires Herald (Energy Department data) (2025)
  22. 2026 Article IV Consultation and Second Review under the Extended Fund Facility, Argentina (Country Report 2026/105), Executive Board 21 May 2026 · International Monetary Fund (2026)
  23. Argentina's inflation in 2025 fell to 31.5%, the lowest in 8 years, 13 January 2026 · Buenos Aires Herald (INDEC data) (2026)
  24. Drought slashes Argentina's soybean production by 51.5%, 4 July 2023 · Buenos Aires Times (Bolsa de Cereales data) (2023)
  25. Historic drought adds to Argentina's economic woes, 6 April 2023 · Buenos Aires Times (Argentine government estimate) (2023)
  26. Argentina's beef consumption falls to lowest level in 20 years as prices soar, 16 May 2026 · Associated Press via Courthouse News Service (FADA data) (2026)
  27. Prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity, Argentina · FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators (SOFI), via Our World in Data (2025 (data 2023))
  28. Poverty fell to 31.6% in the first half of 2025, reports INDEC, 25 September 2025 · Buenos Aires Times (INDEC data) (2025)
  29. Poverty climbs to 52.9% in Argentina, affecting almost 25 million people, September 2024 · Buenos Aires Times (INDEC data) (2024)
  30. Logistics costs in Argentina rise by 300% due to low levels of Parana river: BCR, 6 August 2021 · S&P Global Commodity Insights (Rosario Grain Exchange data) (2021)
  31. Argentina Permanently Lowers Ag Export Taxes (AR2025-0012), 12 August 2025 · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (2025)
  32. Share of population unable to afford a healthy diet, Argentina · FAO/World Bank Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet (CoAHD), via Our World in Data (2024 (data 2017))
  33. Prevalence of undernourishment, Argentina · FAO Suite of Food Security Indicators (SOFI), via Our World in Data (2025 (data 2023))
  34. Prevalence of stunting, height for age, Argentina (SH.STA.STNT.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators (UNICEF/WHO/World Bank JME basis) (2018)
  35. Malnutrition in all its forms and socio-economic indicators in Argentina · Zapata ME, Soruco AI, Carmuega E, Public Health Nutrition 23(Suppl 1):s13-s20 (2019) (2019)
  36. Argentina food inflation series · INDEC data, reported by Trading Economics (2025)
  37. Urban population (% of total population), Argentina (SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators (2023)
  38. Total reserves in months of imports, Argentina (FI.RES.TOTL.MO) · World Bank World Development Indicators (IMF International Financial Statistics basis) (2026 (data 2025))
  39. Argentine country risk drops below 450 points, hitting 8-year low (444 bp, 11 June 2026) · Buenos Aires Herald (JPMorgan EMBI data) (2026)
  40. Social Protection During the Pandemic: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico (Blofield, Lustig and Trasberg) · Center for Global Development (2021 (data 2020))
  41. Argentina's country risk hits an eight-year low as rating upgrades lift dollar bonds (421 bp, week to 2 July 2026; no return to international issuance) · MercoPress (2026)
  42. El riesgo pais de la Argentina en 2025: alta volatilidad, los 3 factores que lo llevaron al maximo (peak of about 1,460 bp in early September 2025), 1 November 2025 · Infobae (JPMorgan EMBI data) (2025)
  43. Prevalence of stunting, height for age, modelled estimate, Argentina and Latin America and the Caribbean (SH.STA.STNT.ME.ZS) · World Bank World Development Indicators (UNICEF/WHO/World Bank JME modelled estimates) (2026 (data to 2024))
  44. Leading banks gamble on Argentine farmland expansion as Milei cuts taxes (Nera platform, Santander/Galicia) · Blue Dollar Rates (Dolar Blue), citing Bloomberg (2025 (published December 2025))
  45. Soybeans dominate expansion of cropland in Argentina · USDA Economic Research Service, Charts of Note (2016)
  46. AQUASTAT country profile, Argentina: area equipped for irrigation · FAO AQUASTAT, Global Map of Irrigated Areas (2002 (data), page as maintained)
  47. Argentina's soy crush hit 19-year low in 2023 (record soybean imports during drought) · Buenos Aires Herald, citing Rosario Board of Trade (2024 (data 2023))
  48. Weekly global protein digest (Argentina pork trade deficit, H1 2024) · The Cattle Site (2025)
  49. Argentina pushes to get out of farming time warp with better GMO seeds · Buenos Aires Times (2024)
  50. Bayer suspende el negocio de semillas y biotecnologia de soja en Argentina · Agrofy News (2021)
  51. Argentina first to market with drought-resistant GM wheat (HB4) · Nature Biotechnology (2021)
  52. HB4 wheat proceeds in U.S. despite Argentina company's financial struggle (USDA deregulation, August 2024) · Capital Press (2026)
  53. Julio Cobos, a 15 anos de su 'no positivo' en un momento historico (2008 Resolution 125 conflict and Senate vote) · La Nacion (2023)
  54. Argentina Imposes 30-day Beef Export Ban · USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (GAIN report) (2021)
  55. Argentina's beef ban: a double-edged sword for competitors · Buenos Aires Times (2021)
  56. La pobreza cayo al 28,2% en el segundo semestre de 2025, el valor mas bajo desde principios de 2018 (INDEC EPH poverty and indigence series) · Chequeado, citing INDEC (2026 (data H2 2025))

What we could not measure

Argentina's official measure of diet affordability has not been updated since 2017 (8.5 per cent), because FAO judges the peso's swings too large to trust the purchasing-power conversion; we substitute food insecurity and other current readings instead of a fresh unaffordability figure. Child stunting still rests on a 2018-2019 survey, now eight years old, with no national anthropometry update since. No single self-sufficiency ratio for protein exists either; it is inferred qualitatively from Argentina's export positions rather than measured directly.

Published August 2026 ·How scores are produced