Born in Virasoro, Pedro studied at the Victoria School, at the Agrotechnical Institute, and later studied Agronomy in Corrientes. There he began to work and "because of those things in life" he returned to the town to work in Las Marías.
His first job in the field and in production was in Las Marías, and since then, he has been learning and adding knowledge, which today allows him to supervise the development and evolution of our yerba mate, tea and trees.
His mother is retired from La Fundación, she started as a teacher, Vice Principal and Principal of Victoria School, while her father was the rector of the Agrotechnical Institute. Pedro started working in the field, in the Research and Development area, where he began learning about testing, product testing and testing production techniques. He then took over the production of seedlings in the nursery and new projects and new investments in yerba mate planting, as well as the scheduling of tasks and soil preparation. Since 2011, he has been in charge of the general supervision of the Las Marías, Virasoro and La Merced fields, including pest control, weed control, contractor control, supervision and administration of machinery and personnel.
One of Pedro's biggest challenges is to optimize resources to find the right moment for each plantation and from an environmentally sustainable point of view. He achieves this through integrated pest management, which involves plant formation, plant pruning and harvesting. “We do proper pruning intervention and feed the plant properly so that it is healthy, so that it is strong at the time of normal pest and weed attacks. In addition, we keep the yerba mate ecosystem and the tea ecosystem as harmonious as possible, as sustainable as possible,” he tells us.
The success of Pedro's work is also closely linked to an initiative that began ten years ago: Las Marías composting. “The composting process consists of transforming and changing the mentality of what is industrial waste. It is an organic amendment that we add to the yerba mate plantations to boost their production, to feed the soil, since the soil supports the production of yerba mate”. As a result of the by-products from the yerba dryer, tea dryer, seeds, sticks, leaves and by-products from the forestry area, a homogeneous mixing process is carried out so that the microorganisms degrade the organic matter and transform it into compost, which is a much more stable and richer organic matter, he explains.
