“We are calling them all and now they do not answer the phone. Let’s see, you have to stop lending yourself for the photo, they bullshit us. If there are no concrete solutions, they have to get up and leave”. The comment from a Córdoba agricultural leader summed up a good part of the sensation and skepticism with which the producers awaited the meeting between the leaders of the Liaison Commission (Rural Society, Agrarian Federation, CRA and Coninagro) that took place on Friday at noon .
After the meeting, there were no announcements or concrete measures for the agricultural sector, which is facing one of the most serious droughts in recent years and which could eat up nearly 2 points of the country’s GDP. What remained was, in addition to the photos, the definition of establishing a work schedule to take economic, fiscal, financial and customs measures and that would be announced in February.
As reported, the intention of the national executive would be to apply specific and sectoral measures and not global and temporary actions, such as a decrease in the rates of export duties or a change in the exchange rate for export activity. There is little expectation that far-reaching measures will be announced.
“The meeting with the government left what we assumed it was going to be, without any announcement. We were supporters from Córdoba of not attending the meeting because it was a staging of empty announcements that were not even announcements. The sector is overwhelmed, beyond the drought due to the practices that the government has been having. And the drought makes that clear,” said Gabriel de Raedemaeker, vice president of CRA.
For the leader, actions such as the elimination of export duties and the need to have a single exchange rate are key. “There are distorting interventions that the government makes with implicit and explicit export closures. That was not discussed, there was no pre-established agenda for these issues, only a staging for cosmetic actions. The Liaison Desk does not have to lend itself to these things without knowing how the announcements are in the sense of what the producer needs. They send messages of gifts to the sector and misleading to society. The meeting was absolutely nothing,” he stated.
In the same tune, Pablo Martínez, president of the Rural Society of Jesús María, manifested himself. The entity is the most powerful “Rural” in the country with 3,000 associated establishments and producers, representation of 5 departments in the north of the province and alliances with other companies in the region.
“In these meetings you have to ask for concrete actions. There are sectors that are in urgent need, such as meat and milk, which are very affected. The harvest of soybeans, wheat, corn is already largely played. But we must ask for concrete measures, that the withholding taxes on meat and milk, which today has 9%, be lowered to 0%, that exports be released and we go towards a free market, that must be demanded”.
For Martínez, the Liaison Table was once again hostage to a political photo with little concrete impact: “What happens here is that there are some players from the Liaison Table who have commitments and are going to ask for some subsidies and we don’t have to go ask for a gift. I bank it if I am a producer and investor and if there is dry or stone, my problem. There are areas where the corn did not flower, they are dry, but hey, it’s a risk, I don’t want a subsidy. We want them not to take us out with withholdings and to free up the markets. You have to work there, ”he remarked.
Fragmentation. Already in the run-up to the meeting, from some sectors there was pressure with the need to establish forceful measures, specifically a new cessation of commercialization if there were no firm responses to the agricultural situation. That will be seen in the coming days and it will undoubtedly be re-analyzed if the announcements that the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, promised for the first week of February do not arrive or have a summary impact.
But the call and the photo of the Liaison Table with the government and attendance at a meeting where there was no defined direction of solutions reactivated the bad relationship between the leaders with access to the national executive and the entities of the interior, closest to the producers. .
Martínez, from Rural de Jesús María, told Perfil Córdoba that this week they will begin to analyze whether they continue to be part of the CRA, the entity that brings them together. The distance with its president Jorge Chemes is already undisguisable.
Once again, it is from Córdoba that a hard core begins to take shape that demands concrete measures and announcements, in the face of the more dialogue-oriented and time-consuming strategy of the leaders of the Roundtable.
“We have to leave Cartez and the CRA if Jorge Chemes does not attend to us or accuse us of what we are asking from Córdoba. What’s the point of staying there?” he says.
-The situation of the producer is very delicate, but the government is also very complicated, is there room for it to give concessions?
Well, let’s talk in numbers. They are going to drop 150,000 social plans, that’s about US$180 million a year. And if you take 9% of withholdings from meat, that’s US$300 million, if they release exports in the future, you could lose US$150 million in withholdings. With the dryness that exists, it is a good incentive to continue producing. They are going to have a great productive impact and small producers are not left on the street against a small fiscal effort.
-Doesn’t the government have these numbers?
They have them and they understand them. They understand everything and know what to do, but there are issues of ideology that don’t let them. In the face of society, a powerful sector such as agriculture must be destroyed. That is the message they give. It is the sector that exported US$ 60 billion last year and you have to hit it because you have to find someone to blame. Now the urgency is meat and milk because they are sectors that are destroyed.
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