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By Bill Faries

March 30 (Read Fulll article on Bloomberg) — Argentine farmers may limit sales of grains, beef and oilseeds this week after a seven-day strike failed to win tax concessions from the government, regional farm leader Raul Victores said.

Farmers opposed to export taxes of as much as 35 percent on soybeans ended a week of road blockades at midnight on March 27. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner refused to budge on the export levies, calling the protests “savage” and vowing to share more tax revenue with regional governments. Farm leaders and government negotiators may resume talks on agriculture policy tomorrow in Buenos Aires.

“Farmers are going to sell as little as possible, just enough to cover their immediate necessities,” Victores, president of the Rural Society in the city of San Pedro, Buenos Aires province, said in a telephone interview March 27.

Soybean prices rose as much as 11.5 cents, to $9.67 per bushel on March 24 after farmers and the government hardened their positions. Further protests may undermine tax revenue in South America’s second-biggest economy at a time when the government wants to increase spending, said political analyst Julio Burdman of the University of Belgrano. A four-month strike against government farm taxes last year led to food shortages and cut Fernandez’s popularity in half to 20 percent.

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By Mark Weinraub

CHICAGO (Read full article on Reuters here) - The U.S. rural economy has weathered the global recession better than most sectors due to steady demand for agricultural products, stable land prices and healthy credit lines for farmers, executives at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago said on Tuesday.

March 17 (Bloomberg read full article here) — India, the world’s second-biggest wheat grower, may subsidize exports to run down stockpiles at government warehouses that may reach a seven-year high, likely pressuring global prices, a U.S. growers’ group said.

The government will face a storage problem when it begins buying wheat next month as it raised the assured price paid to farmers to a record, said Mark Samson, vice president for South Asia at the U.S. Wheat Associates. Reserves may reach 30 million metric tons by June 1, 40 percent of demand, the U.S. Foreign Agricultural Service said in January.

“You are going to see significant amount of wheat exports this year,” Samson said in a phone interview today. “And if they do export, there is going to be some kind of support from the government.”

Exports from India may add to a 52 percent drop in prices in the past year on the Chicago Board of Trade and pose competition to suppliers from U.S., the world’s largest wheat exporter. U.S. wheat shipments fell 20 percent to 20.5 million tons in June 1- Feb. 26 period on declining feed demand from livestock producers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said March 11.