Buenos Aires province farmers on 9 days commercial strike against higher taxes
Farmers Argentina's top agricultural province of Buenos Aires will halt sales of grains and livestock for nine days to protest against a tax hike passed by the local Congress on Thursday, threatening corn and soy shipments from a leading global exporter.
Cash-strapped Buenos Aires province is the country's biggest producer of soybeans, corn and wheat, and the protest might affect grain shipments if exporters run short on stocks. Ports and soy-crushing plants usually have several days’ supplies.
Farmers said they would freeze sales of grains and livestock from Saturday to June 10 over the provincial government's push to raises taxes on the region's fertile farmland, a step they say will put some growers out of business.
“Today is an unfortunate day that's ended with the start of the strike measure that we'd sought to avoid to the very last,” Hugo Biolcati, head of the Argentine Rural Society (SRA), said outside the provincial Congress in the city of La Plata.
The SRA was among four groups that led months of anti-government protests over a hike in export taxes in 2008, one of the biggest challenges of President Cristina Fernandez's five-year rule. The crisis shook local financial markets and pushed international food prices up as exports dried up.
Dozens of farmers, some shouting and waving the white-and-blue national flag, demonstrated in front of the legislature as lawmakers passed the tax increase bill, which Governor Daniel Scioli says is long overdue and will not hurt most growers.
Scioli, seen by foreign investors as a possible market-friendly successor to Cristina Fernandez in a 2015 presidential election, says rural land valuations have not been adjusted since 1955 and should reflect the huge price rises of recent years.
Strong global demand for Argentina's grains and bio-diesel shipments has pumped up the cost of farmland in the world's top supplier of soy-oil and soy-meal and the No. 2 corn provider after the United States.
Members of Scioli's government played down the impact of the tax hike and said growers who have lost crops this season to drought and - more recently - flooding would not see their tax bills rising.
“I'm urging the farmers to rethink this and I'm inviting them to try and resume talks on this,” said Gustavo Arrieta, the Buenos Aires province farming minister.
Scioli, a mild-mannered centrist member of the current Peronist party government has said he would like to run for president in 2015 if Cristina Fernandez's allies do not try to change the constitution to allow her to seek a third term.
Keeping the vast province's finances afloat at a time of slowing revenue growth and double-digit inflation will prove crucial to Scioli's popularity, but he will also be keen to avoid a messy conflict with the farmers.
Many of Argentina's provinces are running budget deficits and struggling to pay wages and providers on time, partly due to reduced transfers from the central government which has seen revenue drop because of a slower economy, smaller crop hit by drought and an overblown consumers’ boom.
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They need to hold off selling Soy, all animal products and start dumping milk in the rivers. BA is already on edge and a few empty shelves or a black out and CFK will be on a helicopter then plane to Miami if she is not “held”for her own protection.
Yes, with all the nightly 'support for the government' ha, ha, going on, it looks like the people are starting to get a little 'agitated'.
One or two more fiascos like those of late and I think the genie of revolution will be well and truly out of the bottle.
Never mind, The Mad Bitch of Argentina made her 'decisions' and will have to deal with the whirlwind they bring.
Oh joy!
Well he's one to stop then, thats exactly what the country doesn't need. The good successors to Cristina would be Kicillof, Timmerman, Alicia Castro, Nilda Gurre (a very experienced minister who was a left Peronist deputy in the early 70s, we don't here much about her but she seems reliable based on her lifelong left record), maybe Annibal Fernandez (though he'll need to control that temper!) and maybe some loyal Kirchnerists I've not heard of, but the best would obviously be Cristina herself back for another term =)
But the fact that even a market friendly politician like Scioli is coming under fire from the farmers over tax shows just how reactionary they are. This seems like a minor (I hope) repeat of the reactionary protests of 2008
Gonna get ugly... animals get very viscous when they are cornered.
I think it should be the politicians that should be lined up against a wall and summarily dealt with.... 150K per vote RG “democracy” at work!!
If yes, then I would agree with you though the farmers still have quite a bit of slack before I reach that conclusion.
neither your fascist thoughts...“traitors”? WTF??? Traitors to what? Your authoritarian praxis and relato?
Think that the right to dissent and to rebel to excesses wasn´t traison...perhaps “idealist subversive” but not that stupid insult.
BTW, the old tradition to wash the dirty clothes at home seems to be outside your nac&pop “principles” in case you have one.
@13 Good idea! Throw all the farmers in jail. How are you at growing things? Apart from your mouth.
@16 Just remember that argieland is governed for the benefit of “the people”. The farmers are “people”. Discuss.
They owes taxes so they should pay the going rate. End of story.
Kris successed reducing the cows stock in 15 MM heads with her wrong policies, vgr 10000 employees of the meat industry became unemployed. As the CEO of JBS put it declaring that “Argentina´s Government is massacring her meat processing industry”.
Kirchner succeeded destroying the wheat chain, without any benefit for the people, but only for a dozen of mill owners, and bread price skyrocketed, farmers can´t seed anymore and Brazil our ally lost the sure and cheaper supply (one of the first comercial win-win goals of the Mercosur)
Corn chain is going in the same direction of failure, let´s see it in a pair of years.
There is one responsable for the starving: Kirchner´s government, her food policies, her inflation and her greedness.
I know myself too much of hunger in suburban areas, where I have been working last 10 years. I know where the governmente supply is stolen and don´t need to repeat stupid slogans written at Casa Rosada or from above in an helicopter.
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