Political upset in Argentina’s agricultural heartland brings farming expert into Marcos Juárez government

Marcos Juárez, in Córdoba’s agricultural heartland, has elected a mayor with deep roots in farming and a councilman whose professional life centered on Argentina’s pork industry.

Germán Font, an agronomist and agricultural producer, won 46% of the vote against 20% for former mayor Pedro Dellarossa. His victory returned Peronism to Marcos Juárez after 53 years. Font ran with the Generación Marcos Juárez list, which defeated the city’s governing group by more than 25 points.

Font has long been involved in rural organizations. He participated politically in agricultural cooperatives and held national youth leadership roles in the Argentine Agrarian Federation. He also spent seven years in Córdoba’s agriculture ministry, serving in positions related to territorial development, agricultural innovation and productive development. He left his post in the middle of the year to campaign in Marcos Juárez.

Jorge Brunori, elected as a councilman on Font’s list, worked for 41 years at INTA’s Marcos Juárez Agricultural Experiment Station. A veterinarian trained at the National University of Río Cuarto, where he also taught, Brunori became a recognized researcher and extension specialist in pork production. He authored or co-authored more than 100 academic publications and took part in more than 500 talks.

Brunori also helped launch Fericerdo in 1998, a trade show held every two years at the station. He retired from INTA just over a month before the election. Marcos Juárez lies in the core of Argentina’s humid Pampas, where soybean and corn production generates an estimated US$1.5 billion per harvest. The city was also regarded as the national birthplace of the Cambiemos alliance after parties joined forces there in 2014.