According to a report of the National Audit Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), Law 22.428 on Promotion of Soil Conservation has not been budgeted since 1989. This is a standard sanctioned on March 16th 1981, intended for both the Federal Government and the Provinces put in place actions to recover and maintain the productive capacity of the lands of the country.

The Watchdog affirms that the Directorate of Soil Conservation and Fight against Desertification (DCSyLCD, for its acronym in Spanish) does not have systematic files or documentation on the progress of the programs that were destined to the matter. "None of the projects met their objectives formally," expands the AGN and explains that the plans had diffuse goals, excessive breadth, or lacked the specification of deadlines and indicators to meet.

Thus, "the unfavorable judgment (on the work of the DCSyLCD, because) it is not possible to analyze the satisfactory application of resources to the achievement of objectives," concludes the report.

In fact, the Audit adds that resources, which come from international financing, "are obtained and managed late," and inadequately depending on the needs that are presented on different fronts. Likewise, the control body says that the management's staff "does not generate reliability" because it does not have procedure manuals, and that "it cannot be determined that the human resources affected (to the programs) are sufficient."

The AGN report reviewed several DCSyLCD projects for soil care. In the case of "Sustainable land management in the transboundary ecosystem of the Great American Chaco", for example, only consultancy studies were carried out, but they were not taken into account to delimit the pilot sites where the planned actions would be implemented. In addition, at the time of the audit closure, there was no funding for the plan.

On the other hand, eleven years after its presentation in Argentina, the "Gran Chaco Americano subregional action program" was not yet implemented and, "just in March 2007, a trinational agreement was signed." While the Monitoring Unit is not functioning, the projects designed do not correspond to the stated objectives and there are no deadlines or goals that reflect a schedule of activities.

Regarding the "Land Degradation Assessment in Arid Areas Project" (LADA), the AGN warned of "the informality of the institutional mechanisms for its implementation," and stated that "there is no File on the plan, there is no formal designation of contracted personnel, there are no semi-annual account renderings that ArgenINTA should submit to the Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainable Development," and that since May 2005, there has been no progress in the experience.
In recent years there has been an increase in the production of grains that caused the advance of the agricultural frontier. Soils worked expanded from the Pampa region to the northeast and northwest, stimulated by the low cost of marginal lands and, in that context, the crop that grew the most was soybean.
The massive clearing to enable agricultural areas, coupled with excessive rains, leads to soil impoverishment and desertification. Seventy-five percent of Argentina's land is arid or semi-arid and, therefore, more exposed to desertification, which is the maximum degradation of soils.