Sáenz Peña was built around the cotton industry and the name of the neighbourhood where I am currently living is called Oro Blanco (White Gold) referring to the cotton flower so when Claudia and Sergio (the landlords) offered to take me to the cotton fields how could I resist!

Now is the time that they harvest the cotton crops and although most harvesters have turned to machinery Sergio knew a place where they still harvest by hand so that the cotton is cleaner, a smaller percentage is missed and unfortunately for the workers it’s cheaper. From harvest the first step of the process were the fields-


The workers are bundled into lorries and travel 80km every day to pick cotton in the scorching heat. They work from dusk until dawn and earn their money by the kilogram (AR$0.40p/kg) most manage to make AR$10 (£/€2) a day apparently if they were really fast at picking cotton they’d make up to double!

The cotton was stuffed into sacks; each sack full weighed approximately 20kg and was poured into a lorry. Whilst we were in the field a storm suddenly picked up and started headed our way, Sergio and Claudia were disappointed but I thought it was fantastic, it really showed the extreme conditions that the workers had to work in.

At the factory the cotton buds were sucked into a machine where the cotton seed and cotton were separated.

The cotton was then compressed and came out of the machine in blocks that weighed 200kg called fardos (imagine how many cotton wool buds that is!!)!!!!

Meanwhile the waste was loaded into lorries and was to be sold to farmers as cattle feed and the seed was sacked and sold to oil producing industries.

It was so impressive to see it all at work; how there was a use for every part of the cotton plant and how something so natural and delicate was treated in such a huge, mechanic industry!