ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER 8 COVER STORY continued from page 7 “The finance minister is always happy in Argentina,” he said. “They need money. They need dollars. They need export taxes.” “And that was a kind of struggle every day,” he added. “Trying to stop the finance minister from raising taxes.” The breaking point came over a single weekend in August 2018, when a currency crisis forced the government to impose export taxes across all sectors of the economy, not just agriculture. Del Solar was devastated. He had not gone to work in government just to do what it had always done. Conflicted, he spent the weekend calling trusted farmer friends before markets opened Monday morning. Several urged him to stay in his post. “I spoke with my wife, my son. I asked them what to do,” Del Solar said. “‘Stay,’ they said. So I stayed.” Some of his farmer friends felt he should have resigned in protest, but he had made a commitment. “I paid the price,” he said, referring to the reputational cost. “I didn’t like that.” He is philosophical about it now, though, noting that a tax applied universally across all sectors was at least structurally different from the usual arrangement. “When it’s only for farmers, it’s only for farmers, and nobody gets it — like right now,” he said. Government taught him something else he could not have learned in the field, something he has since passed on to his farmer friends. Large corporations carry much more power at the policy table than farmers do. They push and lobby for the change they want. And they are heard. “Big companies know how to do that. And sometimes they don’t show themselves,” he said, meaning their approach is not always transparent. He saw this most directly in the push to commercially approve HB4, a genetically modified drought-tolerant wheat, during his time in office. The pressure from the crushing industry and seed companies was immense, he said. But Del Solar held firm in support of farmers, arguing the export market risk was too great.
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