An additional comment with respect to this boom, following Ocampo’s proposal that the growth rates of prices are ever smaller with respect to previous cycles, the current growth in prices has not managed to generate net surplus in values with respect to the phase prior to price declines. Figure 2 shows this surplus calculated in the following way:

Net Surplus = (P_{current year} - P_{1971-1998 average}) * Quantity of soy exported

Where P is the price of soy in constant dollars from 2005.

As Ocampo writes (2011), booms in agricultural prices tend to be smaller each time, which explains why even though the increase in prices began 10 years before, the value of soy exports has not recovered its average values of the phase prior to 2008. This also explains why Argentina must export ever greater volumes of soy to maintain the income growth rate.

As the Dutch disease theory predicts, there are signs (Figure 3) that since the devaluation in December 2002, the exchange rate for the Argentinean peso (measured as the quantity of pesos needed to acquire a dollar), has appreciated, which would suggest that the inflow of dollars for soy exports and investments in this sector upon revaluating the currency has undermined the competitiveness of other sectors of the economy. This point is controversial. While Eduardo Levy Yeyati suggests that the appreciation of the peso may respond to the increase in prices and relative productivity of the grains sector, Martín Rapetti and José María Fanelli ascertain that currency appreciation is explained by local macroeconomic policy (Burgo, 2012).³