TEHRAN, October 31 - Federico Zerboni gazes out from his 4x4 as it rumbles across the pampas, fertile fields of rapeseed and soybean visible as far as the eye can see.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - An agri-business boom in Argentina, fueled largely by soybean and grain exports, has helped offset some of the pain of a bitter recession that forced President Mauricio Macri to call on the International Monetary Fund for a $56 billion bailout.
Zerboni, 53, said his 6,000-hectare (14,800-acre) farm -- and hundreds like it on Argentina's fertile lowlands -- hold the key to the South American country's economic recovery.
"It will be key for the recovery of the country. Other countries have oil, but Argentina depends on its agricultural production," he said.
The sector has largely absorbed the pain of a drought that devastated last year's harvest, bouncing back with what analysts say is set to be a record 2018 grain yield.
"It's the main source of foreign currency, whatever the government," said Zerboni, who employs 10 people at his farm near San Antonio de Areco, 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires.
But Macri, whose center-right government now has to dance to the IMF's tune, has angered some farmers by performing a major U-turn on one of his signature policies, cutting grain export taxes.
After steadily whittling down taxes in a bid to boost exports, the market-friendly president slapped a 10 percent tax on exporters' earnings in the last budget as a much-needed revenue generating measure.
Gustavo Grobocopatel, Argentina's "Soy King" and chief of the Los Grobo agro-industry giant, calls the tax a "distortion."
"Because it's not a tax on profits, but on income, that is to say that you continue to pay, even when you lose money," he told AFP at his Buenos Aires office.
Zerboni and others have had to suck up the discomfort, hoping the government will keep to its word that the tax is temporary.
Previous leftist governments with an urban voter base "discriminated" against the sector, said Zerboni, who sees the tax as "a helping hand" at a time of dire need for the Argentine treasury.
However, he acknowledged that "it doesn't help us that we're a sector that's working well in a country that's falling apart."
Source: AFP
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