Yerba mate price: the negotiations fail and now everyone is looking to the new Secretary of Agriculture

For the fifth consecutive time, the National Institute of yerba mate (INYM) reference prices could not be set for the green leaf and the canchada (dry grass, without grinding) which will govern for the summer period of the harvest. The values ​​will be defined by the Ministry of AgricultureLivestock and Fisheries of the Nation, which it has done in the four previous awards far below of the production cost grid.

It was the sector of mill what blew up every possibility agree at the INYM negotiating table. industrialists they didn’t even want to validate the 67 pesos that are currently being paid producers per kilo of green leaf in dryers. The transformers were planted at 55 pesos per kilo, far from the 84.96 required by the primary sector.

The reference prices set last April by Agriculture set a threshold of 46.86 pesos per kilo of raw material and 178.18 pesos for one kilo of canchada yerba mate. The new minimum values ​​then represented an increase of 27.2% and 28.12%respectively, well below inflation.

All the producers’ eyes are now on new agriculture secretary, Juan José Bahillowho visited Misiones last week and came out in favor “There are no dominant sectors that end up suffocating, suffocating and making the other links in the chain impracticable. At the primary, industrial and commercial level, everyone must have their adequate participation, which allows the sustainability of the supply chain over time ”, he said. Y promised to listen strongly to the provincial authorities on this issue ”, referring to yerba mate.

The provincial government has been trying for several years for the price of the raw material to be 60 cents, but that initiative has always clashed with the government refusal National.

The producers claim it Two years ago, the Agriculture awards ended up hurting the industrysince values ​​are established that are very far from the costs that the Institute carries out periodically.

Herbalist Ariel Steffen was succinct: “Nación has never brought a favorable award to the producer. They (from national officials) they have no knowledge of the reality of our productionthat most of us are small producers, “he said.

The law establishing the National Yerba Mate Institute stipulates that prices must be set by unanimity. In case of disagreement, the values ​​go to the Agriculture premium.

Nelson Dalcolmo, director of the Institute for the producer sector, argued that “the difference between what the millers offered and what the herbalists wanted was 30 pesos” and recalled that since the creation of the INYM “16 times we have not been to agreement, but 25 we went to a prize ”of Agriculture.

This was warned by another of the directors representing farmers, Claudio Hacklander herbalists are getting poorer and poorer because from Nation They set low reference prices to prevent them from being carried over to the shelf.

“A producer charges 65 pesos per kilo of green leaves, but if you reduce the costs of collection and transport, it is reduced to 47 pesos. If we take a yield of 4,800 kilos per hectare, a producer who has five hectares of yerba mate has a monthly income of 10,291 pesos by paying all the taxes and cultural work that a yerbal requires, ”he explained.

In this sense, he said to overcome the threshold of poverty, a producer must have more than five hectaress of yerbales and exceeds 10 hectares not to be considered poor. Hacklander estimated that there are about 4,000 herbalists who have fallen into poverty and another 6,000 are poor.

Inns (correspondent)

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