The 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 carried out a second demonstration to demand an urgent recomposition of the price of the green leaf.
The farmers ask to bring from 240 to 505 pesos per kilo of the green leaves put in the drying room.
The representatives of the producers, dryers and yerba mate cooperatives
seek the National Government to reverse the decree that completely deregulates the market
, taking away from the INYM the power to establish reference prices for the green leaf and the pistachio, which is the yerba mate. dry, without grinding.
They also expressed their disagreement with the appointment of
Daniel Notta
as the new president of the Institute's board of directors.
They consider him one of the main people responsible for the severe crisis that the sector suffered in the 90s with deregulation.
New deal.
The yerba mate producers once again mobilized for better prices and for the National Yerba Mate Institute to continue setting the values of the raw material.
In several sectors of the province, the farmers decided to carry out
a harvest cessation to force the industrial sector to improve the 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 town of Andresito, in the extreme northeast of the province.
Nearly a hundred herbalists mobilized with their machines through the city to make visible the crisis they are going through after the sharp increase in the value of fuel and the devaluation last December.
A group of herbalists, meanwhile, traveled to Buenos Aires to meet with the Secretary of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries of the Nation,
Fernando Vilella
, to explain the particularities of the herbal economy and the role that the INYM has in maintaining a balance between the different links of the production chain.
Although the meeting with Villela was frustrated, the delegation was received in the Senate by the vice president, Victoria Villarruel, with whom they held a meeting of almost an hour.
Villarruel was interested in the situation of the herbalists and expressed her intention to travel to the province in the coming weeks, in addition to speaking with the Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Francos, about the situation of the INYM.
The representatives
left satisfied with the meeting
because they were able to explain in detail the achievements of the National Yerba Mate Institute in its two decades of operation.
One of the leaders who was at the meeting, Sergio Dellapierre, explained that “we explained that in the case of herbal activity, regulation is extremely necessary so that all actors have the same weight when making decisions.
During their visit to the official offices of Buenos Aires, the herbalists came across the version that finally Daniel Notta, a man very close to former governor Ramón Puerta, would not take over as head of the INYM due to the rejection that his figure largely generates. of the productive chain.
He even revealed that the Government would already have another candidate for that position, although it was not revealed who he would be.
The spontaneous tractor attacks carried out by the herbalists are similar to the protests they organized a little more than two decades ago to force the creation of the INYM.
The activity was going through a terminal crisis and the yerbateros ended up camping out for more than a month in front of the Government House, in Posadas, to demand a reasonable payment for their yerba.