By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, May 10 2001 (IPS)

Government officials in Argentina forecast bumper crops this year and next, despite the financial woes of farmers caused by low international prices and the increased use of subsidies by the United States, Japan and the European Union.

Far from agreeing with the government’s projections, rural producers reacted with indignation, complaining that the predictions by the under-secretary of production and foodstuffs, who answers to the Economy Ministry, had little to do with reality.

“It is an impossible projection, which has generated ill feeling among farmers,” agricultural consultant Alejandro Ramírez told IPS.

This month, under-secretary of production and foodstuffs Gustavo Oliverio predicted a yield of around 68 million tonnes of grains this year, and 72 million tonnes next year.

Ramírez, however, estimates that the combined harvest of corn, wheat, sunflower and soy – Argentina’s chief crops – will amount to just over 59 million tonnes this year – nine million tonnes lower than the government’s forecast.

The consultant also pointed out that subsidies for farm production and exports in industrialised countries had grown in the past few years. “The United States earmarked 18 billion dollars to that end in 1998, and plans to shell out 36 billion this year,” he noted.

Soy, for example, which fetches 140 dollars a ton on the international market, enjoys a support price of 193 dollars a ton in the United States. “It’s a vicious circle, because when better prices are guaranteed, the total land planted in soy grows,” he explained.

However, subsidies are just part of the problem.

Nor do farmers believe the trouble lies in whether or not the government projections are inflated, because even with growing yields, the crisis continues to deepen among small and medium- sized producers.

“Such projections generate confusion, because we farmers have been trying for over a month to meet with the president or the economy minister to present them with an overview of the crisis, and now it is as if that crisis did not even exist,” Mario Raiteri, president of the Coninagro rural association, complained in a conversation with IPS.

“Yields might grow due to the incorporation of new technologies, but that is no longer an indicator of how the rural sector is doing. There are more and more opportunistic investors – many of them foreign businessmen – and less medium-sized and small producers, who are going broke,” he said.

That new panorama was outlined in a document sent to the government by Coninagro, the Argentine Agrarian Federation and the Argentine Rural Confederations – the three organisations that represent small and medium-sized farmers in this Southern Cone country.

According to the report, “the profound economic reforms of the past decade led to a paradoxical situation in agriculture.” On one hand, they led to a twofold rise in production and exports of grains and other foodstuffs and to the incorporation of new inputs and equipment, while paving the way for more widespread adoption of sustainable, eco-friendly farming practices.

But at the same time, the reforms “drove many small and medium producers into poverty, generating an unprecedented expulsion of farmers from the sector and the concentration of their most vulnerable segments,” while “creating an uncertain social situation for the majority of the rural population, which is clearly evident in the disappearance of 30 percent of farmers.”

Farmers are thus demanding that the government give priority to reversing those conditions, which have been aggravated by mounting debt, a heavy tax burden – estimated at 40 percent of farmers’ costs – and a lack of financing and active policies promoting the development of agriculture.

In the 1990s, investment in fertilisers, pesticides and genetically improved seeds led to a twofold increase in Argentina’s harvest.

But by the end of the decade, the price of soy, for example, had plunged from over 300 dollars to 140 dollars a ton, due to the financial crisis besieging the sector, added to a collapse in prices and the continued use of subsidies by rich competitors.

Against that backdrop, Oliverio, who was named under-secretary of production and foodstuffs in April, tried to recreate the enthusiasm of the 1990s when he stated that the increasingly widespread use of fertilisers and the introduction of genetically improved strains of wheat would drive production up this year and next.

The official said the yield of a French strain of wheat created by the transnational laboratory Nidera was 20 to 30 percent higher than that of conventional seeds.

Farmers, however, disagree. “The government says we are heading towards a harvest of 20 tonnes of wheat, but if we obtain 16 million it will be like a dream,” said Ramírez.

“That kind of wheat produces only 15 percent more here, and you have to buy the seeds. In addition, it is more difficult to sell, because not all clients accept that variety,” he added.

In short, the channels of communication between the government and farmers seem to have been cut off. And while authorities tout their upbeat figures, farmers – especially the smaller of them – watch as the chances of finding solutions to the crisis become more and more remote.

Excerpt: