Alberto del Solar Dorrego questioned the Visec Carne and Visec Soja platforms and anticipated possible legal action over the handling of data at ARCA. He noted that consignees already pay a different price for cattle without certification and criticized the representativeness of the farm associations.
The agricultural producer Alberto del Solar Dorrego, from Rojas and a member of Rurales del Norte, sharply questioned the Visec Carne and Visec Soja platforms, the traceability mechanisms promoted by export chains to comply with the European Union's environmental requirements. For the farm leader, the problem goes far beyond certification: it lays bare the political weakness of producers, the lack of representativeness of their organizations and an industry that moved forward while the countryside stood still.
“Four cartelized sharpies in Argentina are setting the pace for you, while we, who are 250,000, lock ourselves in behind our gates like a boxer who, in the ring, is losing the fight, backs into the corner, takes punches and doesn't dare to throw a single punch,” he told Bichos de Campo.
Del Solar believes the reaction of the farm associations came too late. The European regulation against deforestation has been under discussion for years and, as he recalled, the meatpacking and grain exporting industries repeatedly warned about its consequences.
“The meatpacking industry and grain exporters told producers to get organized, but we didn't do it, and now we're crying over spilled milk because they are discounting prices from us,” he stated.
His criticism also targets the way Visec Carne is already affecting the cattle market. “We already have it today,” he noted, recalling that consignees discriminate between certified and non-certified cattle. “The one that isn't Visec gets another price because the beef can't go to Europe.”
For the producer, the conflict is not limited to a price difference or to market access: the system expresses cultural and political pressure on agriculture, which is permanently required to justify its activity.
“It's a sector in which they make us feel guilty for having what others don't have. We have the soil, we have the land, we have our fields. Well, we're guilty and we have to prove to society something that neither an industrialist nor anyone else proves,” he maintained.
And he was even more forceful in defending the economic purpose of production: “We work and live in the countryside to make money, to move forward, to be able to improve our business, to have more employees.” For Del Solar, that logic is being questioned by a discourse that turns profitability into something suspicious.
The producer believes the episode lays bare a much deeper crisis of political representation in agriculture. In that sense, he was especially critical of CRA and of the organizations that make up the Mesa de Enlace.
“The four organizations are like mixing water and oil. Because one has nothing to do with the other,” he maintained. He also questioned Coninagro's participation in the Consejo Agroindustrial Argentino, considering that it responds to interests different from those of the individual producer. “It's a business run by the managers of the cooperatives, not by the producers,” he said.
The Sociedad Rural Argentina did not escape his observations either, although he acknowledged that the institution achieved a political advantage that other organizations did not. “The Sociedad Rural Argentina has access to the President of the Nation, but it is still a club with only 3,000 members,” he noted.
His reproach is not only aimed at the leaderships. He also pointed to the lack of participation of producers themselves: “It doesn't reach 15%” of the country's total producers. “Many of those who are in some institutions are only there to go to the cocktail party or to be seen,” he added. “The agricultural sector has the greatest material strength in Argentina, but it is a defeated army, with generals who are good for nothing.”
The fight over Visec opened another concern: the handling of private data of agricultural companies. Del Solar anticipated that, together with other colleagues, he is weighing legal action against the platforms and is consulting with constitutional lawyers and attorneys about the possibility of moving forward in court.
“There will be news on this soon. There is one point that is the most complicated of all: the handling of your personal data within ARCA. Sometimes it's more of a business and people's data are worth more than what you can actually sell,” he concluded.
