The Sociedad Rural de Las Colonias withdrew from the Federal Council of the Sociedad Rural Argentina and is the third organization to leave it in recent weeks. The exit seeks to avoid a dual institutional reading stemming from the dispute between CRA and SRA.
The dispute between the Sociedad Rural Argentina (SRA) and Confederaciones Rurales Argentinas (CRA) over the trade representation of producers in the interior added a new episode. The Sociedad Rural de Las Colonias, in Santa Fe, decided to withdraw from the Federal Council of the organization led by Nicolás Pino, amid the differences the two organizations maintain over the implementation of the Visec platform.
The decision was taken by the new board of the Santa Fe organization, headed by agronomist Pablo Lorenz, and formally communicated on October 16 to the authorities of the SRA's Federal Council. The aim, the leader explained, was to prevent the "double hat" —simultaneous participation in the structures of CRA and the Sociedad Rural Argentina— from generating contradictory interpretations of the organization's institutional position.
"It generated a double reading and that is what the board group did not want," explained Lorenz, who clarified that the decision was taken at the beginning of his tenure, before Carsfe, the Santa Fe rural confederation that is part of CRA, asked its member organizations that participate in the SRA's Federal Council to formally state their position on Visec.
The leader also specified that Las Colonias was not a member of the Federal Council, but rather adhered to that participation space. Therefore, he explained, the withdrawal sought to regularize its situation and prevent it from being interpreted as holding two different positions on the same conflict.
The Visec platform was developed to certify that Argentine soybean and beef exports meet the socio-environmental requirements established by European Union Regulation 2023/1115. That regulation requires demonstrating, among other things, that the products do not come from land deforested after December 31, 2020.
While the SRA backed the implementation of the system, CRA raised objections about its operating conditions, the costs and the demands it can pass on to producers. It also questioned the handling of sensitive production information and warned about the commercial consequences that concentrating that data on a private platform could have.
The discussion escalated in recent days when Andrés Costamagna, an SRA director and a leading figure on its sustainability commission, publicly questioned CRA's position. Among other remarks, he accused the confederation of spreading misinformation and of holding a position of extreme denialism, and compared its behavior to the confrontation scenario that led to the conflict over the mobile export duties of 2008.
The response came in a letter signed by CRA president Carlos Castagnani, addressed to Nicolás Pino, in which he demanded that Pino clarify whether Costamagna's statements represented the institutional position of the Sociedad Rural or were personal expressions of its director. CRA considered that the remarks had been "offensive, disparaging and lacking the respect that should prevail in the relationship between institutions that share the trade representation of the agricultural sector."
The departure of Las Colonias comes as the institutional dispute has already produced concrete movements in other provinces. In Entre Ríos, the Sociedad Rural de La Paz decided to leave the SRA's Federal Council and denounced "repeated institutional abuses" by Nicolás Pino's leadership. The organization particularly questioned the national leadership's direct contacts with grassroots rural societies, without respecting the institutional channels of provincial representation.
The Sociedad Rural de Villaguay later announced its definitive withdrawal from the Federal Council and questioned that Pino's leadership had sent letters directly to various Entre Ríos organizations, bypassing the SRA's provincial delegation. "As a clear sign of this overreach, direct letters have been sent to various rural societies in Entre Ríos, incurring a blatant interference and bypassing without consultation the provincial delegation itself," the organization stated in a communication addressed to the director of District 7, Mariano Berisso.
The Rural de Villaguay also clarified that its decision does not imply breaking relations within the Mesa de Enlace, both provincial and national, and that it seeks to "establish a limit regarding respect for institutional order." As a result, three rural organizations have now decided in recent weeks to leave the SRA's Federal Council: La Paz, Villaguay and now Las Colonias.
In the Santa Fe case, the explanation focused on avoiding a dual institutional interpretation amid the conflict over Visec. Lorenz preferred to take a cautious stance: he acknowledged that there are operational difficulties in implementing the platform and considered that it is still too early to issue a definitive assessment.
"It is not well organized and it had to be sorted out in very little time, and the market quickly takes note; we have to understand that well, how it affects us and how it impacts us," he told AIRE Agro.
He also considered that the system should be reviewed to make it easier for producers to use. "The position will be taken as more time passes; if we make a value judgment today we may be wrong," he added.
