Yerbateros made another big hit and met Victoria Villarruel

Yerba mate producers continue to be on the warpath in defense of the functions of the National Institute of Yerba Mate (INYM) and this Tuesday they held a second demonstration to demand an urgent recomposition of the price of the green leaf. The farmers ask to bring 240 to 505 pesos per kilo of green leaves put in the dryer.

Representatives of producers, dryers and herbal cooperatives They ask the national government to revoke the decree that completely deregulates the markettaking away from the INYM the power to establish reference prices for the green leaf and courtada, or dried yerba mate, without grinding.

They also expressed their disagreement with the appointment of Daniele Notta as the new president of the Institute’s board of directors. They consider him one of the main culprits for the serious crisis that the sector suffered in the 1990s with deregulation.

In various sectors of the province farmers have decided to rcarry out a harvest cessation to force the industrial sector to improve values currently paid for the raw material. Last week there was a tractor-trailer in San Pedro and this Tuesday there was a similar mobilization in the city of Andresito, in the far north-east of the province. Nearly a hundred herbalists mobilized with their cars through the city to make visible the crisis they are experiencing after the sharp increase in the value of fuel and the devaluation last December.

A group of herbalists, in the meantime, went to Buenos Aires to meet the Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Nation, Fernando Villellato explain the peculiarities of the herbal economy and the role that the INYM has in maintaining the balance between the different links of the production chain.

Although the meeting with Villela was frustrated, the delegation was received in the Senate by Vice President Victoria Villarruel, with whom they had a meeting lasting almost an hour. Villarruel took an interest in the situation of the herbalists and expressed her intention to travel to the province in the coming weeks, as well as speaking with the Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Francos, about the INYM situation.

The references They went away fine with the meeting.or because they were able to explain in detail the results achieved by the National Yerba Mate Institute in its two decades of activity. One of the managers present at the meeting, Sergio Dellapierre, explained that “we explained that in the case of the herbal activity, regulation is extremely necessary so that all actors have the same weight in decisions.

During their visit to the official offices in Buenos Aires, the herbalists came across the version according to which in the end Daniel Notta, a man very close to the former governor Ramón Puerta, would not take over the leadership of the INYM due to the refusal that his figure largely generates the production chain. It even emerged that the government already has another candidate for that position, although it has not been revealed who that would be.

The spontaneous attacks on tractors carried out by herbalists are similar to the protests organized just over two decades ago to force the creation of the INYM. The business was going through a terminal crisis and the yerbateros ended up camping for more than a month in front of the Government Palace, in Posadas, to demand a fair payment for their yerba.