You know me: I'm from a country whose government hasn't made any sense in its public pronouncements for quite sometime. I raise cows... and now, for the first time, soy and corn. I'm much closer to the left than the center, politically. I have praised the Peronists from Duhalde thru Kirchner I and II for tremendous advances that they have made. I pay my taxes and I'm glad to see that money redistributed ...throughout this great country that has so generously adopted me ...in the pursuit of a more just society. That's my full-disclosure again.
I just finished listening to the speech and the response from four rural groups.
My opinion: the government wants this strike and wants this fight...
...but it may now be thinking that it has bitten off a bit more than it can chew. My estimation of the Kirchners as savvy political operators may be falling a bit, as well. There seemed to be a bit of desperation in the presentation with its dependence on statistics more than political ideals. My feeling is that they are holding onto "the formula" even in light of the possibility that it's no longer working... shades of the old country.
The first speaker of the evening was the Minister of the Economy, Louisteau. Bad move, to my mind. He might be a wunderkind ...but a "kind" nonetheless. The country as a whole would have liked to have seen an "old gray-back" speak to us rather than what looked like a graduate-student.
The fact that he is young would not have been an issue if he had had something to say. As it was, he repeated the discredited reasons for the harvest-time imposition of the new tax: the "soyazation" of Argentina and the increasing lack of other crops that soy displaces and the need for diversification of produce. Maybe that will play well with people that have never planted so much as a flowerbox... but among people that plant for their living... and ours, the time to influence which crops to plant is before planting. The tax at harvest can't be interpreted as anything other than confiscatory to people that think in terms of seasons not hours and weeks.
What's more is that now farmers don't trust anything the government says about "diversification" of crops. Farmers now have reason to suspect that if they pick next year's winning crop... that crop will be taxed at harvest if someone in the Casa Rosada thinks that too much of it was planted. Even citydwellers can see through this.
Our young minister did, however, mention that the value of farmland has skyrocketed. He failed to mention, however, the hefty percentage that his government would take from that sale too. No mention either if he planned to increase that tax, as well. This was another remark aimed at dividing people ...those who own land from those that don't. The support that has come from residents of greater Buenos Aires for this strike appears to mystify the administration to the point that they feel it necessary to divide Argentino from Argentino.
Not one word about cattle nor cattle producers.
...but he closed with the phrase, "A country that includes everyone." Well, almost, I guess.
The President was in much better form than Thursday. She was composed and looking very presidential. She smiled to herself, to her supporters and to the camera. Through the first half of her speech she did not appear to be fazed by the strike at all.
Ms. Kirchner moved quickly to mention the progress she had made in the area of work and reducing hunger. This was yet another time that tonight's address seem directed at anyone other than the small farmers and ranchers that were often shown simultaneously on the television screen with her. She certainly could not have been referring to their work nor the hunger they personally prevent ...nor the hunger that they fear could come for even them.
She followed, however, with a description of herself as "a president of all the people."
"Soyazation" of Argentina was part of her speech too. There was no mention, however, that the government has passively supported soy production because it was considered non-inflationary because it is almost totally exported. The government actively supported soy as well in its opposition to laws that made the keeping of seed from one year to the next, much to the chagrin of Monsanto.
Biodiesel from soy was another thing strangely absent from this presentation.
She did, however, find time to decry deforestation in Argentina by soy farmers ...something she could halt with a stroke of a pen but has not. A very strange remark on the part of the president ...unless she meant to use it to divide urbanites from ruralists.
The presentation was followed on most networks by spokesmen for four of the leading agricultural groups. Viewers found much more substance from them. What they did not find, however, was any mention of the strike being called off.
It is clear to me that the Kirchner administration is doing everything it can to fuel the flames of this strike. Why they have chosen this particular battle at this particular time is not clear to me.
...currently discussing the US presidential election campaign until Inauguration Day.
Monday, March 31, 2008
6:30pm... and still no Cristina
The whole country is on pins and needles. If it's like Thursday, we won't get around to her first sentence until almost 7pm. Even James Brown never had it this good. (Macio Parker would be good right now!)
Watch Gualeguaychú
...the television is reporting that there are 30Km of stopped semi-tractors at the international bridge. The truck drivers have given the rural strikers 30 minutes to either let them pass or the drivers themselves will begin to block all traffic, both the private and emergency vehicles that the strikers have been allowing to pass freely.
Take it from me, with 20 years in logistics, truck drivers do not knowingly go to places where they even suspect they will not be allowed to pass ...it's too personally expensive to them and too uncomfortable.
All of these drivers left their origins at least suspecting that they would be stuck for hours or days.
Ordinarily, drivers are not paid for their time at blockages of any kind.
Are these drivers being compensated for their "waiting- time" in Gualeguaychú? If so, by whom? Why are they not turning around?
Take it from me, with 20 years in logistics, truck drivers do not knowingly go to places where they even suspect they will not be allowed to pass ...it's too personally expensive to them and too uncomfortable.
All of these drivers left their origins at least suspecting that they would be stuck for hours or days.
Ordinarily, drivers are not paid for their time at blockages of any kind.
Are these drivers being compensated for their "waiting- time" in Gualeguaychú? If so, by whom? Why are they not turning around?
7 Questions for an Argentine Farmer
The Argentine Post has an interesting interview with an agricultural producer today. It's interesting reading. http://www.theargentinepost.com/This strike is not easy for me to understand. As a small/medium producer (my plans for one of those 4x4s that Cristina mentioned in her speech are now gone), I support it and its goals but it doesn't make sense to me on many levels.
Don't get me wrong: I am familiar with strikes, with truckdrivers, and with governments, but this strike should have failed by now.
Currently, I can only come to one conclusion...
...the government wants this strike.
The timing of the export tax hike announcement and the follow-up address to the nation on Thursday, made it look to me that the government wanted to actually provoke a strike.
Based on past performance, the Kirchners seem to me skilled politicians. They must know that almost all strikes have doom in their DNA... a rural strike has so much going against it that it should die on the vine almost immediately.
Urban strikers can miss a few meals and huddle together for support.
Rural strikers are so much more decentralized and isolated.
They don't face the prospect of a missed meal... but rather, a missed season, a missed year. If crops are not harvested on time, they rot in the fields.
If this strike continues a few more weeks... it will be the equivalent of a factory worker "going-out" for a year or more.
The small and medium producers can't afford this. The strikers' traditional adversaries, the grand estates of the oligarchas (or what is left of them) must be giggling themselves silly. All of their money could not have bought this.
I have yet to understand the government strategy that strengthens the resolve of the strikers with every move.
This is especially inexplicable to me in light of fact that the "oligarchy" is the natural adversary of the Kirchners, as well. That group would love to see the Kirchner administration fall. But these immense landowners are not the genesis of this strike and could never have gotten the small and medium sized operators to do their bidding.
Yet this strike plays into the hand of big-agro so perfectly that some very well-dressed ruralistas began helping to staff the informational pickets that we encountered on the road Saturday during our 200 mile voyage back from the very center of the province.
If I'm right about the government wanting this strike, the K's must be feeling ready for a battle with the big producers in order to sufficiently demonize them and remove their power to oppose them in the next elections.
Maybe I'm too close to the strikers, maybe I'm not smart enough, or maybe I'm too foreign (as has been suggested in the comments)
Help me figger this out, if you want.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
The Strike in the Campo
I've been out out of contact with much of the world since we left for the campo on Thursday.
We drove deep into the center of the province driving through demonstrations in Cañuelas, Lobos, Roque Perez, Saladillo, General Alvear, and Tapalqué (the very center of the province of Buenos Aires.)
Fotos to follow.
I was struck by the character of the people that manned the "roadblocks". These are not the oligarcas that we have been led to believe were behind this rural strike. They were the very kind of rural people that my wife and I know from our small-town dealings on a day-to-day basis.
Neither was our experience what we might have expected during the height of a rural strike that has caused the price of soy in Chicago to rise at least 3.3 percent and cause the giant grain ships to be rerouted from Argentine ports.
The road to Tapalqué, some 200 miles to the center of a province the same size as France, was
largely deserted. There were very few cars to pass, not to even mention the number of large agro-bearing trucks that are usually a pain on the provincial two-lane roads.
The "roadblocks" were informational-only for private vehicles and, at least on Thursday, very few semi-tractors were to be seen along the sides of the road and lingering in the truckstops. From my logistics background, it made sense: the great majority of truckdrivers, it seemed, had made the choice not to pull agricultural produce through an area in which they were sure to be challenged, not to mention be delayed severely.
In all my years of driving that 300 Km route, never was the trip faster or easier... even with the roadblocks and the (few) private drivers' curious attitudes toward the picketlines and the literature they distributed.
There was evidence of previously burned tires in the road, the remnants of their steelbelts in the ashes. There were grids of tire-puncturing steel at the ready, showing a menace to those who did not slow down and stop to receive a leaflet or two.
Upon stopping, however, drivers like my native-born wife were greeted with camaraderie and we both wished the ordinary people well. We then passed quickly through the roadblock and onto the next town... and onto the next, admittedly menacing, roadblock.
But at each place it was the same. Working people in working clothes, looking tired and explaining the reason that they were in the middle of the route doing something they had never done before.
The flyers they distributed were all different and all spoke of their own locale's plight over the past few years as government restrictions and increasing taxes took more and more of the profit from their efforts. The figures quoted were not often sourced and in some cases were unintelligible but all spoke of government efforts to make them contribute more and more until they could not sustain hope that it would stop.
We displayed each previous stop's flyers on our dashboard in hopes that no harm or delay would happen to us. Each time we were stopped, however, the people we encountered showed nothing but dismay if not desperation at was happening to them and to what unprecedented lengths they had been drawn to.
These were ordinary country people in Argentina, people that have no history, at least in living memory, of organizing to protect their own interests. Whether or not they knew that they were being barraged in the press as oligarcas (members of the traditional land-holding oligarchy) was not clear to us. The press was also making clear that there seemed to be no national organization that could claim their allegiance... making it difficult for the government to negotiate their way out of the confrontation.
Some groups claimed to be authorized... or, at least, capable of speaking on their behalf. The biggest of them all, Sociedad Rural Argentina was dismissed out of hand by the demonstrators as being the spokesman of the traditional big landowners and the traditional rival of the small and medium sized operators that are the genesis of this strike.
Although there are at least four large agricultural groups that represent great numbers of farmers and ranchers here, the local "assemblies" that man the roadblocks do not appear to be beholden to any of them, making negotiations more difficult.
As we approached Tapalqué, Thursday night, the word was spreading that President Cristina Kirchner would address the nation again at 6pm that evening to respond to the unrest from her previous national address on Tuesday that announced the new taxes on grain exports.
The little town offered little in the way of a venue to watch President Kirchner's address. After giving up hope of hearing the president live... we stopped at on of the few places in town that had not shutdown from 6pm to 8pm in solidarity with "el campo". To our surprise the little store not only was open but had a television. The speech had been delayed to the point that we were able to hear all her introductions and the full text as delivered by the president.
Suspicions had risen that the speech would not be conciliatory. If the president wished to rescind the export tax increase, it was felt that a national address was unnecessary. Given the timing, there was not much to hope for other than a challenge to the "ruralistas" to give up. Those suspicions were not disappointed at close to 7pm when the president began to speak.
Cristina Kirchner appeared unusually disheveled and from the beginning gave no quarter to the protesters that were also shown on the screen during her speech. She framed the debate as Peronism vs. anti-Peronism.
An audible sigh came from the 4 or 5 people in the little store as it became clear that not only would there be no resolution but that it would exacerbated by the swift government rejection of the strike and its aims. Some may have went to bed dejected but others left the little store more determined.
The timing of the speech struck me as strange. The new Cristina Kirchner government certainly wanted to avoid any hint of weakness... like any new government faced with such a crisis... but strikes like these are notoriously easy to break. All that is required is to let them burn out. People need money... and whether day-laborer or investor, all that is normally required is to make them miss a payday or two or three. Then, they reluctantly rejoin the economy. Strikes like this one thrive on attention. For the president to address it so quickly and, to my hearing, so insubstantively, was to invite criticism of weakness.
That night and the next morning, talk was of Eduardo Duhalde, the former president and staunch Peronist and critic of the Kirchner regime that he created by handing the reins of power to them and supporting them. Duhalde gave a speech/interview in which he declared that during the crisis in which Argentina passed thru multiple presidents... leading up to him... that the people of the campo had given up much for Argentina and that he would support them.
Many people along the route and in the rural cafés called him the "bombero", the fireman that would come again to save the day.
On the way back, Saturday, the complexion of the so-called "rural piqueteros" changed a quite a bit. They were much better dressed and seemed to be composed of not the same working-class. A blonde woman that we encountered at the very first seemed to be dressed in clothing that would not have been out of place on a west London street. A man nearby showed-off a pair of the fine boots that are made in the area but are not seen in the corrals in which I had been working hours ago. Anglophile clothing is as traditional in the campo as is the Spanish influence but on the entire trip back not one of the Saturday "crew" on the picket line was staffed by the familiar (to me, at least) weather-worn, thread-bare, sincere men and women that had staffed every position on the way down.
Both Kirchner and Duhalde spoke of a distinction between the small and medium sized producers and that of the grand landholders that exist here but to a much lesser extent than in other South American countries.
This strike does not come from the big landholders.
But already, I could see that the strike was playing into the hands of the natural enemies of the Kirchners and their reforms. The true oligarchy, if indeed it truly still exists, must be delighting in the "heads I win / tails you lose" hold they have had on Argentina since its founding.
I struggled to think how the people that I saw on the trip down to Tapalqué could differentiate themselves from the natural enemies of the present government. The people I saw had already separated themselves from the Sociedad Rural Argentina that was so anxiously trying to negotiate a positive outcome both in the press and with the government... but the people I saw on the Saturday picketline bore little resemblance to them.
"The prediction business is a funny business", Yogi Berra is reported to have said. "Especially when you're talkin' about the future!"
I've made some predictions here in these blog pages. I'll make another one now: if the working, small, and medium-sized producers that started this righteous effort don't find a way to tell the nation and the world the difference between themselves and the few still-grand landowners here, they will be swallowed in the age-old push and pull between what remains of the rural oligarchy and what is left of the urban social reformers in Argentina.
We drove deep into the center of the province driving through demonstrations in Cañuelas, Lobos, Roque Perez, Saladillo, General Alvear, and Tapalqué (the very center of the province of Buenos Aires.)
Fotos to follow.
I was struck by the character of the people that manned the "roadblocks". These are not the oligarcas that we have been led to believe were behind this rural strike. They were the very kind of rural people that my wife and I know from our small-town dealings on a day-to-day basis.
Neither was our experience what we might have expected during the height of a rural strike that has caused the price of soy in Chicago to rise at least 3.3 percent and cause the giant grain ships to be rerouted from Argentine ports.
The road to Tapalqué, some 200 miles to the center of a province the same size as France, was
largely deserted. There were very few cars to pass, not to even mention the number of large agro-bearing trucks that are usually a pain on the provincial two-lane roads.
The "roadblocks" were informational-only for private vehicles and, at least on Thursday, very few semi-tractors were to be seen along the sides of the road and lingering in the truckstops. From my logistics background, it made sense: the great majority of truckdrivers, it seemed, had made the choice not to pull agricultural produce through an area in which they were sure to be challenged, not to mention be delayed severely.
In all my years of driving that 300 Km route, never was the trip faster or easier... even with the roadblocks and the (few) private drivers' curious attitudes toward the picketlines and the literature they distributed.
There was evidence of previously burned tires in the road, the remnants of their steelbelts in the ashes. There were grids of tire-puncturing steel at the ready, showing a menace to those who did not slow down and stop to receive a leaflet or two.
Upon stopping, however, drivers like my native-born wife were greeted with camaraderie and we both wished the ordinary people well. We then passed quickly through the roadblock and onto the next town... and onto the next, admittedly menacing, roadblock.
But at each place it was the same. Working people in working clothes, looking tired and explaining the reason that they were in the middle of the route doing something they had never done before.
The flyers they distributed were all different and all spoke of their own locale's plight over the past few years as government restrictions and increasing taxes took more and more of the profit from their efforts. The figures quoted were not often sourced and in some cases were unintelligible but all spoke of government efforts to make them contribute more and more until they could not sustain hope that it would stop.
We displayed each previous stop's flyers on our dashboard in hopes that no harm or delay would happen to us. Each time we were stopped, however, the people we encountered showed nothing but dismay if not desperation at was happening to them and to what unprecedented lengths they had been drawn to.
These were ordinary country people in Argentina, people that have no history, at least in living memory, of organizing to protect their own interests. Whether or not they knew that they were being barraged in the press as oligarcas (members of the traditional land-holding oligarchy) was not clear to us. The press was also making clear that there seemed to be no national organization that could claim their allegiance... making it difficult for the government to negotiate their way out of the confrontation.
Some groups claimed to be authorized... or, at least, capable of speaking on their behalf. The biggest of them all, Sociedad Rural Argentina was dismissed out of hand by the demonstrators as being the spokesman of the traditional big landowners and the traditional rival of the small and medium sized operators that are the genesis of this strike.
Although there are at least four large agricultural groups that represent great numbers of farmers and ranchers here, the local "assemblies" that man the roadblocks do not appear to be beholden to any of them, making negotiations more difficult.
As we approached Tapalqué, Thursday night, the word was spreading that President Cristina Kirchner would address the nation again at 6pm that evening to respond to the unrest from her previous national address on Tuesday that announced the new taxes on grain exports.
The little town offered little in the way of a venue to watch President Kirchner's address. After giving up hope of hearing the president live... we stopped at on of the few places in town that had not shutdown from 6pm to 8pm in solidarity with "el campo". To our surprise the little store not only was open but had a television. The speech had been delayed to the point that we were able to hear all her introductions and the full text as delivered by the president.
Suspicions had risen that the speech would not be conciliatory. If the president wished to rescind the export tax increase, it was felt that a national address was unnecessary. Given the timing, there was not much to hope for other than a challenge to the "ruralistas" to give up. Those suspicions were not disappointed at close to 7pm when the president began to speak.
Cristina Kirchner appeared unusually disheveled and from the beginning gave no quarter to the protesters that were also shown on the screen during her speech. She framed the debate as Peronism vs. anti-Peronism.
An audible sigh came from the 4 or 5 people in the little store as it became clear that not only would there be no resolution but that it would exacerbated by the swift government rejection of the strike and its aims. Some may have went to bed dejected but others left the little store more determined.
The timing of the speech struck me as strange. The new Cristina Kirchner government certainly wanted to avoid any hint of weakness... like any new government faced with such a crisis... but strikes like these are notoriously easy to break. All that is required is to let them burn out. People need money... and whether day-laborer or investor, all that is normally required is to make them miss a payday or two or three. Then, they reluctantly rejoin the economy. Strikes like this one thrive on attention. For the president to address it so quickly and, to my hearing, so insubstantively, was to invite criticism of weakness.
That night and the next morning, talk was of Eduardo Duhalde, the former president and staunch Peronist and critic of the Kirchner regime that he created by handing the reins of power to them and supporting them. Duhalde gave a speech/interview in which he declared that during the crisis in which Argentina passed thru multiple presidents... leading up to him... that the people of the campo had given up much for Argentina and that he would support them.
Many people along the route and in the rural cafés called him the "bombero", the fireman that would come again to save the day.
On the way back, Saturday, the complexion of the so-called "rural piqueteros" changed a quite a bit. They were much better dressed and seemed to be composed of not the same working-class. A blonde woman that we encountered at the very first seemed to be dressed in clothing that would not have been out of place on a west London street. A man nearby showed-off a pair of the fine boots that are made in the area but are not seen in the corrals in which I had been working hours ago. Anglophile clothing is as traditional in the campo as is the Spanish influence but on the entire trip back not one of the Saturday "crew" on the picket line was staffed by the familiar (to me, at least) weather-worn, thread-bare, sincere men and women that had staffed every position on the way down.
Both Kirchner and Duhalde spoke of a distinction between the small and medium sized producers and that of the grand landholders that exist here but to a much lesser extent than in other South American countries.
This strike does not come from the big landholders.
But already, I could see that the strike was playing into the hands of the natural enemies of the Kirchners and their reforms. The true oligarchy, if indeed it truly still exists, must be delighting in the "heads I win / tails you lose" hold they have had on Argentina since its founding.
I struggled to think how the people that I saw on the trip down to Tapalqué could differentiate themselves from the natural enemies of the present government. The people I saw had already separated themselves from the Sociedad Rural Argentina that was so anxiously trying to negotiate a positive outcome both in the press and with the government... but the people I saw on the Saturday picketline bore little resemblance to them.
"The prediction business is a funny business", Yogi Berra is reported to have said. "Especially when you're talkin' about the future!"
I've made some predictions here in these blog pages. I'll make another one now: if the working, small, and medium-sized producers that started this righteous effort don't find a way to tell the nation and the world the difference between themselves and the few still-grand landowners here, they will be swallowed in the age-old push and pull between what remains of the rural oligarchy and what is left of the urban social reformers in Argentina.
testing...
...am I a "spam blog" again?
UPDATE: Nope... my hosting company is migrating this weekend!
I'm just back from a deep foray into the campo!
My observes will follow...
UPDATE, UPDATE: I wanted to write a post before reading my emails or comment... that wasn't possible because of my problem with my hosting company. Too bad, I wanted to write it without knowing what all YOU know and I DON'T! (I've been away from email and media for a few days.)
Well! My internet tells me that the strike is over! WHAT A JOKE! It's on more than ever, fans.
Better stay tuned to Yanqui Mike for the skinny (my wife tells me that CNN is retracting earlier statements along the line of the BBC and NYT that the farmers have relented... the farmers have not and they haven't even considered doing so.
The really tough stuff hasn't even begun.
More to come...
Mike
UPDATE: Nope... my hosting company is migrating this weekend!
I'm just back from a deep foray into the campo!
My observes will follow...
UPDATE, UPDATE: I wanted to write a post before reading my emails or comment... that wasn't possible because of my problem with my hosting company. Too bad, I wanted to write it without knowing what all YOU know and I DON'T! (I've been away from email and media for a few days.)
Well! My internet tells me that the strike is over! WHAT A JOKE! It's on more than ever, fans.
Better stay tuned to Yanqui Mike for the skinny (my wife tells me that CNN is retracting earlier statements along the line of the BBC and NYT that the farmers have relented... the farmers have not and they haven't even considered doing so.
The really tough stuff hasn't even begun.
More to come...
Mike
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Food! ...it's what for dinner!
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the subject of food can arouse passions. A tremendous asado, delicate young spring greens, fine old cheese, a heady new malbec can bring strong men to tears. People get passionate about what they put in their mouths. Nothing new there.The surprising/sudden aspect of these recent passions is that they are expressed regarding a shortage of food. Ever since the "Green Revolution" cheap food has been common and famine more a problem of logistics than the old specters of drought and pests.
But now there's a shortage of food ...not in Argentina! ...but there is a worldwide dwindling of the most basic, low-on-the-foodchain, stuffs that feed us and feed the animals that feed us.
In countries that now have little or none of the stuff that keeps us alive there is already major unrest. Here in one of the world's great breadbaskets we have unrest as well. There is no contradiction in that.
The challenge is the allocation of this short supply of food, the protection of our current blessings, and the protection of our production.
I believe it unfair for other nations to suck all the beef out of Argentina simply because their currency is currently stronger than the Argentine peso. I have said that here and in public whenever I meet people that are opposed to any sort of government price controls or export restrictions or have some neo-conservative delusion regarding "free-trade" (which is really not anything of the sort but more like labor-arbitrage.)
I have been happy and proud to accept less for my cows in the knowledge that not only am I part of a community that helps feed the world but also helps maintain the culture of the country that so generously adopted me.
There is a certain pride as well that I feel sometimes when I stop to consider that agriculture has played such a strong roll in helping Argentina recover from the crisis of 2002, helped the government increase public spending while gathering great stores of foreign exchange, and generally govern from a position of strength here and abroad.
Nothing surprised me when, because of these restrictions on agriculture, I saw the men and women of the campo adapt and increase their efficiency, abandoning many of the old ways and adopting the latest thinking and techinques developed both here and abroad.
As worldwide prices for foodstuffs increased tremendously, we in the countryside felt that not only would we continue to contribute to the equally tremendous recovery of the Argentine economy ...but that we would also be able to partake in the world markets along side the other great producers of food.
Not all of my fellow campo-capitalistas felt so altruistic ...but in light of the coming high prices, past offenses were quickly becoming forgotten.
High expectations. When high expectations are crushed it always feels worse than when hopes were not so heady.
The government's tax increases are not draconian. They are incremental and progress on a sliding scale and take into consideration the prices established in that big art deco building at the foot of far-away La Salle Street ...you know, the one with the giant aluminum statue of the Goddess of Grain on top.
The timing of the export tax increases appeared to be almost designed to be incendiary.
The new tax was announced/imposed at harvest... ostensibly to impress upon farmers and ranchers that they should diversify their production so that all of us in Argentina can have something besides Cargill Soyburgers and Archer Daniels Midland Vodka for dinner (Something I've lamented in these pages, too!)
But farmers and ranchers knew that export taxes could not possibly change plants that were already ready to be harvested. These "reasonable" export tax increases could have been instituted after harvest if their purpose was to influence a diversity of production.
This sudden shock to the high expectations of producers here not only crushed their plans for more investment in their fields (and, yes, a bit of a higher standard of living, too) but felt punitive. The timing made them feel they were being punished ...not being influenced to produce a wider variety of foods. The tax felt confiscatory in light of the timing and the first high prices on the international market in decades.
The lack of psychology in this land of psychiatry was what astounded me.
Almost forgotten complaints about the heavy hand toward agriculture were suddenly remembered ...and any feeling of having been a partner in the recovery of the Argentine economy were dashed.
Apparently, to those producers, they were going to be treated as a cash-cow ...never to be allowed to enjoy a windfall of foreign money like so many other industries.
Flooding back to mind came the treatment of beef producers with the price controls and export restrictions that (until this week!) made beef cheaper than even chicken ...and forced pastureland into corn, soy, and sunflower for cooking oil.
The condition of dairymen, a great number of them now soybean farmers, was remembered again and how the government used the few big milk buyers to enforce price controls that forced them out of the business and sent the price of butter in France thru the ceiling (manteca a través el techo!)
They saw how the Truck Drivers' Union was being used as a de facto police force to clear the roads blocked by their protests ...until the drivers themselves saw the injustice of it.
Last night, on television, they saw the sudden arrival of the closely aligned piqueteros (who could have predicted!) to clear the Plaza de Mayo of ordinary working families with children with threats of violence in lieu of using the police.
Now what do we have?
We have producers even more determined to keep their products from market and even less of an integrated agricultural policy that helps the market make good decisions for the nation and keeps them from overproducing in any one area. Roadblock protests may no longer be necessary as the feeling of solidarity among them has increased dramatically. (Beef producers may not be in as good condition to cooperate: their calves are ready for sale and they have no excess feed to keep them on the ranch.)
We have farmers who might be lured back into some other production exempt from the new export taxes ...but very suspicious that whatever they produce will be subject to a sudden new decree that they are harvesting something that need to be suppressed by a new tax.
We have farmers and ranchers that simply must invest in their own lands in order to meet the growing demands of Argentina and the world ...but now will not.
Nothing anyone can do will turn my neighbors in the campo into a Socialist like me.
But our center-left government with close ties to Hugo Chavez, whom I admire very much, seems to have forgotten a saying attributed to Lenin, "A capitalist will sell his very hangman a rope."
With a little foresight, and a little cajoling, and at least some recognition that there is no replacement for food (and a big variety of it!) ...a government can easily make farmers and ranchers do/plant/raise anything they want.
In the big building on La Salle Street, they have another saying, "high prices cure high prices ...and low prices cure low prices."
Farmers and ranchers, if they feel that they are making their own decisions, will produce so much of a variety foods that they'll eventually go bankrupt (the sad history of agriculture here and everywhere.)
However, if they feel that no matter what they do, they will hit an artificial barrier ...not during the planning/planting stage ...but during their harvest, they will not invest in the production that is necessary and can come from no one else other than themselves.
Argentina has fed itself and the world for more than a century. Argentina and the world needs agriculture more than ever.
The world needs Argentina more than ever.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Brace yourselves...
No meat in Argentina? No pork, no beef, not even chicken in my Disco a few moments ago.The TV, radio and the wire services are hopping all over the story.
There is a full blown cacerolazo here in downtown Retiro (video).
Governments fall when things like this happen in Buenos Aires Argentina.
I could see it coming and mentioned it here in the comments of a previous post. There are also fewer vegetables in the supermercados, as well, due to the growing strike in the countryside.
What touched it off tonight was President Cristina Kirchner's disparaging response to the farm producers that were recently hit with big hikes in export taxes right at a big harvest time.
President Cristina Fernandez refused to ease tax hikes on agricultural exports Tuesday, facing down angry farmers embroiled a nationwide strike that has all but halted production in one of the world's biggest beef-eating and beef-exporting nations.
Just a little error on the IHT's part: Argentina is THE biggest beef eating country on earth. Australians eat more meat of all kinds... but in Argentina, they don't even call it beef ...they call it carne. Meat.
The beef producers have had it tough under the previous K. No one really came to their defense as the price restrictions and export restrictions toughened. Many beef producers turned to crops as worldwide grain prices began to beggar the term "skyrocket".
Then, this year, as Argentine farmers (and former ranchers) began to prepare for a great harvest with a great price to boot (both of those things rarely happen in the same year) the government announced tough new increases in export duties with one of the explanations being that they were preventing a "monoculture" of soy.
Farmers didn't go for it. They responded that if the government wanted to prevent too much of any one crop they could have told them at planting time instead of suddenly seizing their windfall prices after their hard work and investment and just as they prepared to harvest.
Heavy export taxes on commodities are an Argentine tradition and government controls on what happens to the food supply have given this country some of the lowest food prices in the world.
But the surprise tax was too much for the agriculture types. They started to withhold their meat and grains and vegetables from the market. Then they took to the roads and blocked them with their dumped produce and equipment.
Violence loomed and there have been several hospitalized over the last few days as a result of clashes with the truck drivers' union that was enraged that they could not get in and out of the countryside. The government has been very tolerant of the drivers and it appeared that the union would lead the way out of the crisis by getting the roads open again.
But the drivers are breaking with their union and showing sympathy for the farmers and ranchers. Tonight, there are chants of "¡Moyano vení!" at the corner of Santa Fé and Callao, of all places! (Moyano is the head of the truckdrivers' union.)Where this will go is anybody's guess. The producers seem determined to continue and are most likely buoyed by the big response in Capital tonight. Cristina Kirchner is, however, not in a position to show weakness in her new presidency. What's for sure is that the "pipeline" of foodstuffs is emptying ...and even if the farmers and ranchers begin to relent, it could take weeks more to get steak and potatoes to your table.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Clarín's Sunday Magazine (English!)
Great coverage for yer Dems in this Sunday's Revista ¡Viva! Go out and get one!NOW IN ENGLISH! CHECK IT OUT!
Friday, March 21, 2008
Your next President... SUCKER!
Dateline: Buenos Aires ArgentinaNovember 5, 2008
Bamboozled again! Sen. John McSame is now President of the United States!
Hey, who could have predicted!
No way the "Party of War, Death, Destruction of Liberty, Privacy, the Economy, the US reputation for competence in any area"... could have gotten back into the White House!
Who'da thunk it? Not you.
You didn't register to vote.
Or maybe you registered... and maybe even voted in the primaries! But something happened and you lost that "lovin' feelin'". Maybe you were fired-up for a Democratic candidate that dropped out of the race... or maybe you were fired up for a Democratic candidate that DIDN'T drop out of the race... but got beat anyway.
So you didn't vote and you didn't help anybody else to vote.
"I'm not into politics," you told the Yanq. "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the two Coke / Pepsi political parties," you would proudly pundit to your friends at the bar.
Well, well. Welcome to hell, my friend. And we're all here with you. And while you're here, say hello to a lot more of what you despise... and a lot less of what you love and hold dear.
Every terrorist in the world combined could not have done as much damage to the US as Bush, Cheney and their lackies have since 2001. Don't believe me? Go see my buddy, Hugh... then multiply to the power of 4 ...or 8.
But wait! It's only MARCH 21!
There's still hope and there's still time for you to vote in the primaries if you haven't already! There's still time for you to vote in the general election in November!
Come to Plaza Dorrego,
Defensa 1098,
in San Telmo,
this Easter Sunday at noon
and register to vote in November!
Defensa 1098,
in San Telmo,
this Easter Sunday at noon
and register to vote in November!
Come to Plaza Dorrego this Sunday at noon to volunteer and help register your friends and fellow Americans, too!
"Won't you please come to Dorrego...
for the help we can bring."
for the help we can bring."
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Give us some feedback, please...
I must be doing something very wrong... please leave a comment and tell me what it is.There is a great big PayPal button in the middle of the page... but many of you have not sent in even the tiniest amount to help Democrats Abroad Argentina reach out to what the US Embassy has said are 20,000 US citizens living in Argentina.
Please leave a comment and tell me why my little shill for the Dems and against the war and the destruction of everything yanquis hold dear has not reached you. Seriously, please leave a comment (or better yet, leave a fin or a sawbuck or a double-sawbuck!)
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
...my beautiful friend.
I haven't posted for a while and I've been trying to figger out why. It hasn't been blogger burnout nor writers' block nor anything like that (although I have been busy with Democrats Abroad Argentina!)I've come to the conclusion that the only thing that has been on my mind for quite a while has been agriculture here in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the world.
My instinct is that none of you are really interested in that ...but whenever I write about cows and campo and stuff my hits go up and I get plenty of comments. Bringing that back to mind, I post to you a bit of a digest on this beautiful late summer's day.
Here and all over the world, we've all been doing a lot of things that we would rather not do: you have been paying a lot more for food... and I've been raising a lot less cattle and much more grain. That is not going to stop for a long time.
It is being called "the end of cheap food". Unless you are elderly, you probably can't remember a long stretch of high food prices. Ever since the "Green Revolution", food has been plentiful even for the poorest of the world's people.
Famine became more a problem of war and/or logistics than the age-old plagues and drought. There have always been expensive delicacies but for more than 50 years there has also been plenty of cheap food. If you find some cheap food today... buy it and eat it and remember it; you won't regret it and you might end up with a story to tell someone's grandchildren.
Maybe you've been thinking that it's just here in Buenos Aires because of the great wealth and the great population that is concentrated here. Or maybe you think it's just Argentina and the return of inflation to an economy that has been growing as fast a China's for 4 or so years in a row. Nope, it's everywhere.
And there is no end in sight. The word "bubble" is being applied no doubt because we are and have been living through so many bubbles in the last decade. But this is fundamentally different and is also being amplified by the popping of those many bubbles: the real estate bubble has popped and has brought about the popping of the investment bank bubble which has punctured the credit bubble which is bringing about the end of the stock market bubble which is causing a commodities bubble.
Sorry to have to tell you, dearest reader, but the stuff you eat is now a commodity. It is traded like oil on the world's markets and it doesn't much matter where you live and eat. Food grown anywhere on the planet is fed into the international marketplace and into worldwide logistic supply chains. Perhaps it doesn't actually, physically move from one side of the planet to the other (often it actually does!) ...but it, at least, moves somewhere nearby to fill a vacuum created by food that has moved from another place that has moved to fill a vacuum created somewhere else... and so on: a worldwide push-me / pull-you that feeds everyone that has a dollar no matter where you are.
Grains are the most commoditized of them all... grains can be used to feed people or animals quite nicely... they are dense and heavy and can be easily and cheaply transported in huge quantities over long distances.
There are no words to describe what has happened to worldwide grain prices in the last 18 months or so. Nine months ago, I would have used the word "skyrocket". Now, I don't have a big-enough word to describe it.
I don't want to sound like the 5am Indiana farm report coming over your radio while you're waiting for the "real" programming to begin ...so I'll just use wheat as an example.
Less than 2 years ago, the price of wheat was between $2 and $3 a bushel.
About a year ago, a young commodities trader almost lost his job from predicting that today's price would be more than $7 as we speak.
Today, the price of wheat is more than $12 a bushel and has traded at times for up to $25 per bushel.
Prices are much the same for any other grain you can think of... if not, they won't be planted in the coming spring.
And that's the problem: farmers (even ranchers like the Yanq!) are looking at what they normally grow... and are making some big decisions about some big changes.
Here in Argentina, home to the vast and fertile Pampas that has helped to feed the world for more than a century, things are changing fast.
A few weeks ago, I was in a little forrajería (a place that sells all sorts of supplies to farmers and ranchers) in a small town in central Buenos Aires Province. The conversation that I overheard has haunted me ever since: an old rancher was speaking to a veterinarian about an offer he had received from a company that specializes in planting crops on other people's land.
"What am I going to do with all my cows!", said the rancher, a fine old gentleman with a rugged face and build that left no doubt as to his life's personal involvement in the outdoors environment in which he has earned his living (the saying here is: "the owner's eye fattens the cattle.") He was dressed in the usual manner for these parts: a little Spanish, a little Gaucho, a little English country gentleman.
He was truly beside himself. He had been offered (I'll skip the formula for brevity's sake) an incredible amount of money per hectare... in cash, up front, with absolutely no share in the risk... from an independent agricultural concern to plant his fine pasture (marginal crop land, according to last year's opinion) with soy, corn, wheat or whatever the contractor had in mind. An incredible, truly life-changing amount of money, especially for a man that had struggled through so many lean years to raise cattle in a thankless world.
Perhaps you can relate to him better if you can remember being offered a tremendous promotion with the salary that goes with such a thing... but required you to change everything about your life and even loved ones. Maybe you said yes... maybe you decided against it. Maybe your arm was sore for years from patting yourself on the back for making such a good decision. Maybe it turned out to be a wash or, in the worst case, a terrible decision that uprooted you and left you with nothing.
This rancher, however, looked to be about 60 years old, a seasoned country man and one that could recognize a good prospect when he saw one ...but he had never seen anything like this. (Abandoning your herd is not something any rancher can take lightly... he might not live long enough to re-establish it if the offer turned out to be a bum steer.)
We made the choice last year. We converted almost half of our cattle land to crops. We were in a different situation than the old rancher and our decision didn't have the ramifications of reducing our herd all that much. Today, however, my wife and I are pretty much in the same boat as him. We are feeling pressured to become a "hobby" ranch inside a very profitable farm and contracting much more land out.
Enough of me! Back to you!
"High prices cure high prices and low prices cure low prices", goes the old saying from my old hometown of Chicago ...but that's not gonna work on grain prices for at least a long time.
A reasonable person would be expected to comment, "If wheat prices are so gollderned high this year... that just means that farmers will plant more wheat for the next few years and the prices will come back down as the supply goes back up!"
The trouble is that there is very little land left to plant. My mother-in-law has commented for years that "folks seem to be planting even the graveyards with soy."
The push-me/pull-you in wheat is not very vigorous when confronted with the alternative options of planting soy or corn (forget beef in Argentina... there is no money in it compared to grain.) Farmers who are adventurous may consider crops other than those three grains ...but only if the price is high enough to draw them from what is considered a "sure thing".
A farmer in North Dakota recently remarked that he used to plant mustard seed on some of his land. In the face of these unbelievable grain prices, however, he stopped. This year, however, the prices offered to him to return to planting the lowly mustard increased more than 5 times. Even then, he's only considering it. If that sounds like higher prices, no matter what, for mustard ...just consider what that will do to the prices for all kinds of foods, formerly so cheap that you never even considered them. Tomatoes, potatoes, onions anyone?
The reasonable reader returns here to comment, "Don't be an idiot! Land suitable for those vegetables are simply not suited to soy/corn/wheat!" That reader is truly reasonable... and would have been astute in their observation until recently.
In the same way, however, that $100+ oil makes expensive lightbulbs and windmills suddenly a good idea... $15 soy/corn/wheat makes things look very different to the producers that have traditionally provided you with the other tasty things that make your dinner interesting.
Ordinarily, a farmer with good tomato land would not consider planting those grains. Now, however, although his yield will be much lower than the traditional great grain farmers of the world... he could earn 5 times the price per bushel than years before... like installing solar energy in your home, suddenly it starts to make sense. Some farmers will continue to produce lovely things for salad... but you can be sure that those things will be much, much more expensive.
Tomato, potato, lettuce, arugula, swiss chard farmers, may be able to switch back to their traditional crops in nothing more than a year if grain prices drop back to something approximating what we used to call reasonable... producers of animals, however, will not be so nimble. No matter that they raise their animals on grassland or in feedlots of grain, if they stop producing animals they will need more than a season to re-establish their herds and flocks. Some animals such as beef cattle need years, others not so much, but it means high prices to you whether or not they return to meat production.
Not to "bury the lede" (as is my wont) but this situation is a direct result of humans choosing to change their diets as they improve their standard of living, our need to find a replacement for non-renewable automobile fuel, and the collapse of the US Dollar and economy. (I can give you the rundown in the comments if it looks like anyone is interested.)
Don't forget that this will be good for the small number of agro-types that have been struggling to establish a living comparable to others not so necessarily involved in such life-sustaining efforts (this could be just the thing for struggling African farmers!)... but will be bad for everyone else.
You, as a consumer, can bring this into balance... in fact, consumers are the only ones who can.
If you choose to simply flow with the higher prices, however, I will enrich myself from your ennui.
If, on the other hand, you choose to involve yourself and the ones you love in this complicated issue... you will reap rewards great enough for everyone.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Panadero Extraordinario (Blatant Shill)
...as well as a friend, supporter and fellow baker (many decades removed, yo.)Everybody already knows about his cookies, brownies, stollen!... all the sweet stuff. No need to gild the lily in his dulce department.
What constantly surprises me (and subsequently surprises others) are an invention of his own, Los Copetines.
Savory, salty, elegant little sonsabitches that you can barely stop yourself from eating. We've served them on multiple occasions and they are always the first to disappear.
Surprising in that when I mention picking up some snacks from Sugar & Spice, someone invariably says, "Oh, well we need something other than cookies." Then, if there's anybody in the room that has ever gorged themselves on Frankie's copetín there follows a chorus, "NO! You haven't tried the SALTY ones!"
He's got a pizza flavor with cheese, oregano and pepper; a cheese and nuts variety that beer drinkers rave about; a pesto flavored one that caused a friend of mine to burn some serious shoe leather when his local boliche ran out; and a one that he calls fugazza that could very well replace one of your regular grocery staples.
A mi they're a fascinating invention. On one hand there's nothing like them... but on the other hand, there's something very Buenos Aires about them. I used to see little tiny delicate savory squares show up on the "ingredientes" that would come with a beer at many places in the city. Now you don't get much more than some peanuts and the little "palitos". You really have to go to a hotel bar nowadays to get them or show up at a confitería that still hangs on to the old tradition.
Frank's are a fusion of those little delicacies and the yanqui propensity toward stronger flavors and bigger portions. An extranjero baker that knows his Buenos Aires.
I have no idea where I can recommend you buy them... other than his joint on Guatemala 5419. Lots of shops around town carry them but they're all terrible about keeping them on the shelves... once you eat a few, you can understand that there might be a problem keeping them in stock.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Whaddya doin' tomorrow night?
The Democrats just might get a candidate tomorrow night as a result of the results that come out of TX and OH.If you're like me, you'll be jonesin' to see the returns come in... especially if there's some other political junkies around.
If that sounds like fun to you... and I know it does... you can stop by Macama Resto in San Telmo anytime after 9pm and grab a beer and a bite... and maybe go home knowing who we're gonna be voting for this November!
It should be a lot of fun and a chance to meet a bunch of your friends and fellow Dems. I hope I see you there!
Tomorrow, Tuesday the 4th, 9pm, Macama Resto, Peru 1482 (at Brasil) 4361-3983
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