San Vicente Cooperative Votes to Admit 47 New Member-Farms

The Cooperative Council in San Vicente voted 34 to 8 on Thursday to admit 47 new member-farms, the largest single intake in two years. The motion passed despite a sharp disagreement over whether the cooperative's dues structure adequately protects new entrants during their first harvest cycle. Several sitting members argued that the Federal Office for Cooperative Affairs has not processed the land-registration paperwork needed to enroll the new farms into the federal fair-price scheme, leaving them temporarily without access to the guaranteed export rates that justify the membership cost.

The new farms range from three to twelve hectares, mostly yerba mate and organic coffee production in the Río Esperanto valley towns of Salto and Oberá. Councilor Miguel Rivas, the cooperative's treasurer, said the intake reflects confidence in the region's harvest prospects and the federal exchange's recent stability on coffee prices. But he acknowledged that the Federal Office's delays create a gap between when farmers pay dues and when they gain the scheme's protections.

The vote signals the cooperative's appetite to grow despite the federal bureaucracy. Admission ceremonies are scheduled for mid-November, and the council expects to begin processing the new members' land titles within thirty days. However, the outcome also underscores a friction that has shadowed Tierra Verde's cooperative movement for months: the slow pace of federal registration and the risk that new smallholders will bear the cost of membership before they can benefit from it.