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08 Jun 08
Alicia ReyArgentina, one of the world's biggest breadbaskets, should be rolling in cash as world food prices soar.
Instead, soy, wheat and corn have sat for weeks in silos as farmers protesting new export taxes suspended sales.
Farmers were lifting their strike Sunday night in a last-ditch effort at a third round of talks. But their three-month standoff with the government has already paralyzed the rural economy, caused scattered food shortages and tanked the new president's popularity.
And continued stalemate could spike global grain prices at a time when food costs are already high.
Still, experts say grain prices won't rise forever, and many warn that Argentina may be missing its shot at that record revenue -- and headed for economic crisis.
'They are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs,' said Claudio Loser, a former Latin America director at the International Monetary Fund.
Farmers meet Monday with a national ombudsman who has offered to broker the crisis, but the government has not yet agreed to join talks.
Argentina is one of the world's top four providers of soy, corn, beef and wheat, and rising farm exports -- up 48.2 percent since 2003 -- helped the country rebound from economic meltdown in 2002, driving five years of more than 8 percent annual growth.
Exports stood to climb even higher this year, as international soybean prices jumped about 26 percent and corn prices about 34 percent between January and June.
To tap those gains, President Cristina Fernandez decreed a new sliding-scale tax on March 11, boosting rates on grain exports as prices rise. Current export taxes on soy, for example, jumped to 46 percent from 35 percent, and would top 50 percent if prices swelled above $600 a metric ton.
The move was meant to tame inflation by trapping exports in Argentina, driving down local prices and encouraging cultivation of stocks like wheat and cattle, which have been abandoned for more lucrative soy.
But objecting farmers have suspended grain shipments for 89 days in protest, crippling rural towns-
Argentina, one of the world's biggest breadbaskets, should be rolling in cash as world food prices soar.
Instead, soy, wheat and corn have sat for weeks in silos as farmers protesting new export taxes suspended sales.
Farmers were lifting their strike Sunday night in a last-ditch effort at a third round of talks. But their three-month standoff with the government has already paralyzed the rural economy, caused scattered food shortages and tanked the new president's popularity.
And continued stalemate could spike global grain prices at a time when food costs are already high.
Still, experts say grain prices won't rise forever, and many warn that Argentina may be missing its shot at that record revenue -- and headed for economic crisis.
'They are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs,' said Claudio Loser, a former Latin America director at the International Monetary Fund.
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