Argentine farm groups vowed Tuesday to suspend grain exports and meat sales, resuming protests against controversial export taxes a day after talks with the government stalled.Farmers will halt meat sales and shipments of grain for export from May 28 to June 2, sending a more than two-month conflict over increased taxes on soy and sunflower seed exports back to an apparent deadlock. "Faced with the national government's recurring refusal to resume dialogue, the farmers' commission has resolved to call on all growers in the country to resume protest measures," Mario Llambias, head of the Argentine Rural Confederation, told reporters.

Unless progress is made, he warned, farmers will on June 9 step up efforts to ensure the "the solutions the sector needs are achieved by legislative process."



President Cristina Fernandez's government hiked export taxes on select grains in March, unleashing weeks of strikes that triggered food shortages and protests nationwide. One march drew about 300,000 people in the town of Rosario on Sunday.

Fernandez contends the tax increases are needed to redistribute wealth to the poor, but farmers say the taxes make it difficult for them to make a living.

Argentina is the world's third largest exporter of soy.

The government has been reluctant to negotiate with farmers and canceled a meeting planned for Monday with farm leaders, prompting Tuesday's resumed protest.

Former President Nestor Kirchner, Fernandez's husband and head of the ruling Peronist party, held an urgent meeting with governors and legislators to analyze the crisis, releasing a statement Tuesday that called the protests "antidemocratic."

Fernandez has avoided referring directly to the dispute in recent days, but her party's statement seemed to make clear her position.

"It's surprising to see the virulence of this savage and interminable lock out," the statement read.

Farmers "boast of causing shortages and don't care about making the food that Argentine families need for their tables more expensive," the statement said.

Across Argentina, frustration is growing and polls show support for Fernandez, who took office in December, beginning to ebb. In Entre Rios province, a center of rural unrest, farmers began roadblocks on Tuesday morning to keep trucks from taking grain across nearby borders into Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil.

Still, farm leaders cautioned Tuesday against the measure, warning followers that blocking traffic could cost their movement popular support.

Fernandez's government says the increased export taxes — more than 40 percent on most grains — are needed to reverse incentives that world markets now offer farmers to grow soy at the expense of less lucrative crops like wheat, corn and cattle. Shortages of those products are inflating domestic food prices amid Argentina's already high inflation.

"Redistribution should be carried out from those who have the most to those who have the least. The state is the only one who can make that change happen," Fernandez's party statement said.

Email To A Friend