Mexico City, like others in the country, looks beautiful adorned with cempasúchil flowers in its avenues, its houses, its altars. It is one of our most traditional flowers, but the ones we see are mostly cempasuchil flowers of Chinese origin. They are a much more resistant and durable variant, which has significantly improved the productivity of national farmers.
The national cempasuchil flowers have a much slower process of development, they are less resistant, they must be planted in the place where they want to be exhibited. Chinese plants that are produced from hybrid seeds can be easily transported, and as we see on city ridges, thousands can be planted and last for weeks.
Producers are congratulated: if before they produced some 600,000 cempasuchil plants each year, now they grow about 5 million, ten times more: prices are more accessible and that also benefits consumers. Seed producers sell cempasuchil farmers the entire technological package: the seed, the appropriate fertilizers, and the substrate that comes along with the appropriate pot to market it. It is a big business for these large companies, without a doubt, but also for farmers who, as we said, have increased their production and marketing tenfold, and have reduced potential damage and even pests.
The federal government does not want to boost production with hybrid or genetically modified seeds. In the congress we have seen how, for example, the production of native corn is promoted, which simply would never be enough to feed the population and the same happens with many other food products.
There is much talk of food self-sufficiency and we are further away from it every day, precisely for not taking the measures that many other countries have taken, from India to the United States, from Ukraine to Argentina, to use science in favor of agricultural development.
When López Obrador was president-elect, we had a long talk with Alfonso Romo about different topics, including the transformation of the country’s agricultural capacity. It was September 2018. This told me who would later be the chief of staff and after leaving that position he became a contact, an increasingly difficult task, with the private initiative.
Romo told me then that “if you analyze as a businessman, how is Mexico, we do not have food independence, we do not have food security. We import 70 percent of the gas; 60 percent corn, 90 percent soybeans; 80 percent of the rice…or 90. Of the beans, 75 percent. And for everything, everything, we depend on a single country. In business, I learned not to put all my eggs in one basket. I don’t like to depend on a single client, or on a single product… so I don’t like it. In such a rich and unequal country, you need different solutions. Example: guarantee prices.
“Are they necessary?” I asked him.
-No. Guarantee prices throughout the Republic, no. But the agriculture of Oaxaca, of Chiapas, of Guerrero, cannot be compared, nor does it have the same solutions as the agriculture of Sonora…
-Are you saying that they are not going to be guaranteed prices as there were in the time of Echeverría, López Portillo?
-No. They are going to be very punctual and in some crops, and let me go to the bottom part: the secretary of agriculture is going to be divided into two, sophisticated agriculture, that of the north, which is very successful, with berries, vegetables, fruits vegetables. It is a very technical agriculture at the height of any country in the world. But then we have another Mexico that lives in the 17th century, which we have to support differently. We are going to remove everything we can from the secretariat of Social Development from patronage programs that are not needed and we are going to give it guidance so that the support is sustainable. Support productivity per hectare. I give the example: in the north, in Sinaloa, there are 14 tons per hectare of corn, you go to Oaxaca, to Chiapas, one ton per hectare. If I bring an improved seed program, just seeds, (as is done with cempasuchil, let’s add it now) I can increase productivity per hectare from one to two, three tons. That’s a lot of minimum wages.
-But there is also resistance to these changes, right?
-I am not talking about genetically modified products. I’m talking about genetic improvements from traditional crosses. I’m not talking about anything that causes a sting in society. It is an issue that for me is not a problem, but…
-But for many in Morena yes…
-For many yes, and we are not touching it… But to be able to walk we have to remove what differentiates us, and we have to put, better, what aligns us. We are differentiating and providing different solutions according to the realities of each area. It is a concern that the southeast of Mexico is practically abandoned. There is no agricultural extension; there has been no development research. The field is abandoned. So, let’s attend to these areas that today depend on agriculture, that with very little can improve their standard of living, and little by little, incorporate them into modernity. For them a good seed is modernity. So far Rome.
It was September 2018. Four years later, all that remained with good intentions, except for products such as cempasúchil, which demonstrate how we could produce more and better. But the south is still in agricultural lethargy and there are those who want it to stay that way.
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