Shuttle: Producers are afraid of federal taxation, but receive friendly fire from state allies

Agricultural producers are preparing for a strong defense against possible taxation of the agricultural sector by the new federal government, but they are having to fight their own allies.

Important states in the national production of grains and livestock, and which were supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, have projects to tax agricultural products.

According to these governments, these measures revert to the benefit of the producer himself. After Goiás, Paraná, the second largest national producer of grains and one of the leaders in the production of proteins, mainly pork and chicken, wants to establish a fund for the development of infrastructure and logistics for the state.

In the government’s assessment, this measure will be a driving force for the development of agribusiness in the state. The cries of the producers, however, were general, coming both from Brasília and from associations and federations in the state.

With so much pressure, the government withdrew the Bill of the CCJ (Commission on Constitution and Justice) from the Legislative Assembly, where it was to be considered this Tuesday (22). The return will depend on a political consensus.

For Aprosoja Brasil, the forwarding of this project by Governor Carlos Massa Ratinho Junior is a betrayal of agribusiness, since rural producers voted heavily in his re-election.

The measure, still in the evaluation of Aprosoja, will bring negative impacts both for the population and for the profitability of the producer.

According to the bill, the deferral of ICMS (postponement of payment) is conditional on the payment of a contribution to the FDI (Logistics Infrastructure Development Fund) by producers.

The contribution percentages for the FDI vary from product to product and are based on percentages of the Paraná Standard Fiscal Unit, currently at R$ 127.06.

The values ​​for collecting the proposed grain tax are in percentages of the Fiscal Unit per ton. Soy producers will collect 32.66%; corn, 14.95%; wheat, 18.50%; and cassava, 11.22%.

In the case of soy, the producer would have to pay BRL 41.50 per ton to benefit from the ICMS deferral.

In the case of livestock, the payment for the FDI will be in percentage of the Fiscal Unit per head of animal. Male cattle pay 42.18% of the Fiscal Unit; the cow, 33.84%; pork, 4%; and chicken, 0.09%, according to the original proposal of the Bill.

center pivot Tereos, from the sugar, ethanol and bioenergy production sector, set up a center pivot irrigation pilot project in the cane fields at the Vertente (Guaraci) and São José (Colina) units, both in the northwest of the state of São Paulo.

Productivity The company believes that, with the project, it will be able to increase the productivity of the field by 20 tons per hectare of sugarcane, in addition to mitigating the impact of periods of drought.

Productivity 2 For Everton Carpanezi, superintendent of agro-industrial operations at Tereos, in view of more severe droughts, irrigation and fertirrigation measures are increasingly important to guarantee the productivity of sugarcane fields.