Hear
Why is the countryside not being able to fully express the enormous potential for generating and earning genuine foreign exchange that the president Javier Milei and the country as a whole need? Why is it so difficult for successive governments to interpret the needs of the agricultural producer in this sense? Why doesn’t there appear an interlocutor capable of clearly transmitting the tasks that a ruler with a statesman’s vision should not avoid or postpone so that agricultural producers are capable of finally becoming the locomotive of recovery that makes possible the beginning of an era of sustainable, truly inclusive and sustainable growth of our economy?
Three questions that in light of events still remain unanswered. Meanwhile, some sectors of the agroindustrial chain are prophesying the disappearance of our star product, soybeans, perhaps in an attempt to preserve for themselves benefits enjoyed for years, under the protection of a State plagued by distorting interventions that invariably punished the productive link and transferred its income to the export industry to the point of urging it to threaten its collapse if such benefits disappear when the precepts so often enunciated by those who profess the philosophy of libertarian thought and today lead the reins of our country are finally fulfilled.
The truth is that we find ourselves traveling the path that could lead us to the doors of a cycle of almost unprecedented prosperity for our country or to a new scenario of recurring failure that, if it arises, will be even more painful than so many others that have already occurred. We have gone through what will happen after having gone through months of profound economic sacrifice for a good part of our society.
The productive forces of Argentina need clear, concrete and forceful signals because they can no longer feed on promises or hopeful speeches. For the Argentine countryside, these signals are summarized in premises that are too basic, such as the immediate and definitive elimination of export duties that still weigh on the commercialization of wheat (at a time when its announcement could boost the sowing of this cereal). , corn, meat and milk and a clear reduction schedule until its disappearance in the case of soybeans and their derivatives.
Likewise, the announcement of the automatic elimination of the PAIS Tax for all productive inputs and the unification of the exchange rate should be a priority on the agenda of the Minister of Economy. Likewise, the absurd discrimination that makes it impossible for those producers who have 5% of soybeans in their inventories to access a financing rate equal to the rest of the producers (even when that rate is considered usurious in any serious country) should end.
Any intermediate alternative will be interpreted by the producer as more of the same, another patch with a different name or staging, but with the already known consequences for the overwhelmed productive activity, suffocated by the weight of an insatiable, obscene and failed State, at the same time. which, paradoxically, President Javier Milei despises, but, by delaying these decisions, he continues to feed at the expense of the income of the agricultural producer.
Meanwhile, the producer will continue hiding, defending what constitutes his way of life, trying not to disappear and taking refuge in his production – his true currency – and There will be no force from heaven that will take him out of that strategy that has nothing to do with speculation or greed, but is part of the most primitive of instincts: that of survival.
Continuing without understanding its idiosyncrasies, revealed in this reality, will lead the current government to continue making old mistakes from the past and will lead us to a new collective frustration. We all need this Government to do well, to listen and to allow itself to be helped, as well as for those who make up the Legislative Branch not to be tempted to assume attitudes of partisan speculation and, by virtue of the very serious situation that Argentina is experiencing, to approve without further delay the Base Law and the fiscal package. The Argentine countryside can still help turn history around. But we still continue walking through the desert.
The author is an agricultural producer
