ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER 9 COVER STORY BACK ON THE FARM What Del Solar learned during his time in office helps shape decisions on the farm today. Government in Argentina, he said, is always in crisis or on the edge of one. Finance ministers react out of fear, and they react fast — sometimes over a single weekend. So he farms defensively now, hedging against the policy shocks he knows will come, staying involved in advocacy through CREA and Sociedad Rural, and trying to shape the outside environment he could not change from inside. The governments that followed Macri restored grain export taxes. The current Milei government, elected in late 2023 on a platform of radical economic liberalization, has reduced the soybean export tax. The tax was lowered from 33 to 26 per cent, and then cut again to 24 per cent in December 2025. Just two weeks ago, Milei announced a schedule to reduce it further by 0.25 to 0.5 percentage points per month beginning in January 2027, conditional on his coalition winning the next election. Del Solar acknowledges Milei has delivered genuine reform in mining and energy, where a large investment incentive program has attracted significant foreign capital. Agriculture, he said, has not received the same treatment. “He’s a libertarian, but not with farming — with other industries, with mining, energy,” he said. “You can’t be a part-time libertarian.” The same tax burden suppresses fertilizer use. Argentine farmers cannot justify the agronomic investment when export levies cut so deeply into returns. The result is a widening gap between what Argentine soils are capable of producing and what they actually produce. Yet he is not without hope. Argentina has the land, the knowledge, and the people. What they need, he said, is simple — a policy environment that is stable long enough to let them work. “More than three days, please,” he said with a chuckle. “At least one week. It could change everything.” •
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