Peasant workers, together with small and medium agricultural producers grouped in the Argentine Agrifood Table (MAA)held a protest this Wednesday at noon in Plaza de Mayo demanding “concrete measures” to deal with the effects produced by the drought that affects a large part of the country and to demand that Congress sanction projects that “could serve to confront the climatic drama”.
“In this new public intervention we will explain our demands to face the tragedy of the drought. After almost a year of productive emergency, caused by the extreme drought that plagues the country, peasant families and small and medium-sized producers are on the verge of of disappearing, with great losses of crops and death of animals,” spokespersons for peasant organizations warned Télam.
“Despite having participated in numerous instances of dialogue, in which the national government assumed the commitment to respond to our claims, in fact there was no proposal or concrete action to contain those of us who produce food in our country,” Victoria Escobar, from the national coordination of the Union of Land Workers (UTT) and a reference to the MAA, told this agency.
While Diego Monton, of the National Indigenous Peasant Movement (Mnci) and a reference to the MAA, listed the problems facing the sector and the “project laws that are dormant in Congress and that could be used to deal with the climate drama.”
“There are five bills presented by the Argentine Agro-Food Board that could provide a solution to our problems and that continue to sit in Congress: the Rural Leasing Law, the Land Access Law, the Cooperative Financing and Agroecological Transition Law, the Protection and Strengthening of Rural Areas and Segmentation Law of Agrarian Tax Policies,” he explained.
This week, the National Government announced that it will have a series of exceptional measures to alleviate the impact on agricultural producers of “the most serious drought in Argentine history” that will include the suspension of summons and tax benefits for the forced sale of bellies, in addition to the elimination of paperwork to expedite access to benefits.
Erika Solis, UTT tambera delegate from the town of San Vicente in Buenos Aires, expressed: “Once again we are coming to this Plaza de Mayo, the small producers who feed the people with healthy food. We are putting together the map of the drought, so that the Those who govern understand the seriousness of the situation we are living in. Thousands of small and medium-sized producers are disappearing today.”
“We need -concluded the leader- direct economic assistance that reaches small and medium producers. They are only looking at the sector of rural employers, members of the extractivist agro-industrial complex. To get out of this situation, we must support the solidarity and cooperative field, the field that feeds”.
