Gov’t: we can’t prevent butter shortages

Buryaile argues producers are opting to make cheese instead as dairy sector struggles.
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Bread and butter might suddenly not be the most appropriate metaphor to describe a steady, basic means of subsistence, as the latter is set to become either scarcer or more expensive, the country’s Agriculture Minister Ricardo Buryaile confirmed yesterday.
“There is going to be a lack of butter in supermarket aisles” because of “business decisions” to “produce cheese instead, as the profit margin there is higher,” Buryaile told the press yesterday.
The news came only days after rumours of massive increases in the price of cooking oil (due to the end of a subsidy for local retail sales) led to a panic rush to buy as much as possible, causing temporary shortages and leading the government to negotiate an agreement guaranteeing a temporary price cap and the continued supply of the product.
Yet according to the minister, the state will not “meddle” in the issue this time because “when it has to intervene it does so, but sometimes it can and in other instances it cannot.”
Speaking to Radio Uno, Buryaile argued that the problem has two sources: on the one hand, there is a lack of raw ingredients, as milk producers have been struggling for years and butter requires a lot of it, while competing products such as cheese don’t demand as much. “There has been a decision to produce less milk and butter is a sub-product of fluid milk, so there will be less of it,” he said. Cheese is also more profitable, he argued.
“There are business decisions by people saying, ‘I will make cheese because it allows me to make more money’ and I can’t meddle in theirs,” the official said.
Sector in crisis
Behind the issue of butter lies a longer-term conflict regarding dairy production in the country.
Farmers have complained for years about how milk producers are struggling, both during the Kirchnerite and now the President Mauricio Macri’s administration.
But the government has so far refrained from handing them the significant financial support they have been requesting.
“We can’t fix the accounting sheets of producers by ruining that of the state,” Buryaile said, suggesting there is not enough money to cede to their demands.
He also blamed the past administration for the crisis in the sector, saying that during the “good times,” when prices were better than at present, the government kept the windfall profits that producers should have saved for a rainy day such as this.
As for policy changes, he said that this administration would not engage in price controls, which he argued “always ended up failing in Argentina”, although he said that they could “persuade” retailers to sell cheaper without “putting a gun on the table,” in a reference to what former Domestic Trade secretary Guillermo Moreno was rumoured to have done during the Kirchnerite era.
“To improve competitiveness we have to be more transparent, increase supply and have a Domestic Trade Secretariat constantly looking at production, wholesale and retail prices,” he said.

 
Source: Buenos Aires Herald
Link: http://buenosairesherald.com/article/219114/gov%E2%80%99t-we-can%E2%80%99t-prevent-butter-shortages
 

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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