An Argentine farm strike has depleted meat counters, paralyzed grain exports from a key global supplier, and is severely testing the government's reliance on strong-arm tactics with business. The two-week strike is the largest in decades and has seen growers of all sizes set aside differences to unite against the government. They are fighting a new tax hike on windfall profits from high-priced soy exports. But the protest is also aimed at the way President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner raised the tax, in a surprise decree typical of her and her husband and predecessor Nestor Kirchner, who concentrated power in a handful of top ministers and forced companies to bow to price controls and export bans. She backed the new tax with tough words on Tuesday, saying farmers were getting rich off cheap labor and subsidized fuel. But her speech was met by the farmers' vows to continue blocking highways in the agricultural heartland and by an unexpected “cacerolazo” protest on Tuesday when thousands of middle-class Argentines banged pots and pans in the streets. It was the biggest “cacerolazo” since the 2001-02 political and economic crisis when protests toppled a president, and it could pressure Fernandez to negotiate with business for the first time. “It's clear that a normal country needs dialogue, reflection and a sense of a shared future, which today is totally absent from the gestures and words of the government,” journalist Fernando Gonzalez wrote in an opinion piece in Clarin newspaper. As farmers held back goods from market, Argentines, the biggest beef eaters in the world, were opening cans of tuna and looking at supermarket coolers full of expensive rabbit and a few packages of ground beef instead of fine steaks. Growers had hoped for talks “We've reached a point of very high tension. These protests may have been organized in some cases, but in most places there was great spontaneity,” said pollster and political analyst Ricardo Rouvier. The Kirchners have ruled during a five-year economic boom as Argentina rebounded from a painful crisis, and Fernandez is highly popular among the poor majority who voted her into office late last year. Stubbornly high inflation has Argentines worried, however, and Fernandez's approval rating slid to under 50 percent for the first time in March, according to one reputable poll. Cattle ranchers and soy farmers do not normally evoke sympathy from Argentines who see them as a privileged elite, but they are starting to look like underdogs after years of confrontation with the Kirchners, who have intermittently banned beef and grains exports, hiked export taxes and capped domestic food prices. The center-left government's policies have favored the industrial sector, which officials say creates more jobs and pulls more Argentines out of poverty. “The government will likely emerge weakened from this conflict. This is clearly the most important challenge the Kirchners have faced, and its resolution is still uncertain,” Daniel Kerner, analyst with New York-based Eurasia group, wrote in a report. In her campaign, Fernandez pledged to forge a broad social pact to create consensus on the country's economic future, and many thought that meant she would negotiate with business leaders instead of berating them the way her husband did. But talks with business never materialized and Fernandez's harsh words for farmers this week were reminiscent of Nestor Kirchner's public dressing-down of oil companies and retailers when he forced them to lower their prices. “Farmers feel disillusioned, mistreated, unrecognized and discriminated against,” wrote huge soy producer Gustavo Grobocopatel, usually a booster of the Kirchners, in a column in La Nacion newspaper. The government scoffs at wealthy soy producers, saying the tax will redistribute wealth and ensure farmers plant wheat and corn for local consumption instead of just high-priced soy for export to China. __
