Land Registry Backlog Deepens, Locking Smallholders Out of Federal Price Scheme

The Federal Office for Cooperative Affairs in San Vicente has not processed a land-title application in three weeks. The backlog now stretches across nearly two years of pending cases, blocking smallholders from the documentation required to join the federal fair-price guarantee scheme that protects coffee and yerba mate producers from tariff shocks.

Farmers who cannot produce a registered title cannot enter the cooperative network that locks in minimum prices. Without that protection, they sell to independent buyers at whatever rate the local market will bear—rates that have fallen sharply since Oriente Moderno's port tariff increase earlier this year.

The registry office, understaffed and operating on a paper system despite federal digitisation initiatives, has become the unintended gatekeeper between Tierra Verde's smallholders and the economic security the Federation promised them at its founding. Regional Assembly members and cooperative leaders say the crisis is now urgent enough to demand federal intervention.