What happened this Saturday in the Plaza de Mayo was more powerful than the mobilization in 2008when the countryside acted to thwart the attempt of the “moving withholdings”. This is the mechanism created by the brand-new CFK government to capture a larger proportion of the sector’s revenue, due to rising international prices.

At that time, the rural unrest in the city of Buenos Aires provoked a unexpected sympathy in the society of Buenos Aires, which felt the claim as something real. The refrain of “four out of four” and “the pickets of prosperity” began to break down. Unknown leaders, such as the “twin” Alfredo De Angelis, suddenly became famous characters, shattering the old image of “oligarchs” accumulated over decades of misunderstanding.

But qualitatively different happened yesterday. More than the numbers say, after the unexplained surveys that marked the event, what is visible is the widespread belief that the countryside and agribusiness are the engine of the economy and society.

For this reason, even if it is thought of as a claim for fatigue in the face of constant aggression and the extraction of resources from the interior, the tractor attack (which is repeated in all internal squares) came to renew the initiated encounter between the countryside and the city. “We came to receive you”, “you are with us”, “where are you from?”, “Strength, we will help you”.

If in 2008 agriculture was revealed as a good supplier of foreign exchange and tax revenue, what has happened since then has been very bad. Although export duties remained in effect (also during the Macri period, although weakened), the agribusiness sector was the only thing that worked. And in its dynamics, the result of that ancestral impulse to run forward and find a way around it even in the worst of situations, it made the interior move strangely.

All related industries, upstream and downstream, have grown. Seedbeds, fertilizer plants, machinery factories in modern industrial parks. It has long been difficult to labor inside. Despite the continued specificity. This is the “diffusion effect” of a real activity, unparalleled in international competition. And that is happening despite the fact that an obscene portion of the revenues have been transferred to the Nation.

Since 2002, withholdings or export duties have been in effect. Since then, only through this channel has the State collected more than $ 100 billion, no one is flying inside because they are not co-participants. All the growth was the result of internal dynamics, including private banking and to some extent the official banks of the provinces. Banco Nación went through times where it did not lend to “soybean farmers”.

Since the new Kirchner government took office, now with Alberto Fernández as president, not only have withholdings increased, but also the exchange rate fell. The gap is now 100%, which means that for every 200 dollars, the exporter receives 100 from the Central Bank. In other words, if the value of the current crop is 40 billion dollars, the government maintains 20 thousand through exchange rates, and another 10 thousand through restraints.

It is plain and simple an expropriation. That is why the main slogan of the mobilization is the defense of private property. This is a meeting point throughout society, despite sensitivity about a better distribution of wealth.

Everything has a limit, beyond which slide is unavoidable, especially when walking on the ledge. And now the economy minister, accompanied by the president, launched the reckless theory of “unexpected income”. The price of agriculture has definitely improved. But this is not only because of the “black swan” of the invasion of Putin’s troops in Ukraine, but because of structural shortcomings.

The world needs grains, especially wheat, and these pampas can produce it. It is an opportunity, but it is also a social responsibility. Many poor countries are suffering from deficits, to the point that FAO has called for filling the deficits.

The attempt, by the way, of the creative, tax on “unexpected benefits” (fired this week by the head of the IMF, let’s all say), has a tremendous kinship with mobile withholding. They did not pass that time, as a result of the mobilization of agriculture, which aroused the enthusiasm of the city. It will be difficult for them to advance now, after a quiet but strong demonstration, in which agriculture has convinced society that we should take care of the trampoline we left behind.