Registry backlog locks smallholders out of federal price schemes

In the town of Santa Rosa, forty kilometres south of San Vicente, Carmen Rodríguez tends coffee plants on a plot her family has farmed for three generations. She applied to register the land with the Federal Office for Cooperative Affairs in June. Four months later, her application sits in a processing queue, and without formal title confirmation, she cannot join the regional cooperative or access the federal fair-price scheme that would guarantee a floor for her harvest.

The backlog has grown to more than two thousand pending registrations across Tierra Verde, according to data released last week by the Cooperative Council in San Vicente. Smallholders like Rodríguez are caught between the rhythm of the agricultural calendar and the pace of federal paperwork. The harvest season is here. Prices are set. And many farmers who should be selling through protected channels are instead forced to negotiate with private buyers at whatever rate the market offers.

The Federal Office for Cooperative Affairs acknowledged the delay in a statement Friday, blaming staffing constraints and a surge in applications from displaced farming families resettled in the region over the past eighteen months. The office did not specify when the backlog might clear or offer a timeline for processing the oldest applications.