After almost 20 years of using the Contract Farming scheme, the Federal Government decided not to use it and instead, improvise, in the middle of the threshing floor, a new marketing scheme for corn from Sinaloawhich consists of buying up to 2 million tons at a price of $6,965.
SEGALMEX would buy 1.5 million tonsprotecting 17,771 producers who have up to 15 hectares and that are added to the 500,000 tons that the Government of the State of Sinaloa will buy, through a short-term credit for up to 3,800 million pesos, which will protect another 3,000 producers of up to 50 acres.
However, it should be noted that producers with up to 20 hectares will produce 2.2 million tons of corn, which exceeds the total volume of the strategy, that is, there is no way to protect those who have a larger acreage.
BUREAUCRATIC. The marketing scheme, being new, has generated many doubts among producerscollection centers and even state and federal officials themselves.
First, because the President of the Republic announced it on April 1but the operating rules were published until May 14 and the list of wineries, until May 29, that is, a month after many producers had already threshed and delivered their harvest to other wineries.
For these reasons, many collection centers refused to accept the harvest from hundreds of producersto give priority to their partners and qualified, asking them to leave their harvest in storage, to which is added, the collapse of the storage capacity, since the corn cannot be mobilized because SEGALMEX has not paid 1 single ton.
Faced with these problems, which the Governor called a “boycott of the industrialists”encouraged the producers to take over the facilities of CARGILL, Maseca and Minsa.
EXPENSIVE. The purchase of the 2 million tons of corn at $6,965 will cost 13,930 million pesos, added to the 3,000 million pesos that will cost storage from 6 to 12 months, the financial cost, and freight to the center and south of the country. which gives us a grand total of 17,000 million pesos spent from our taxes to protect only 1/3 of the corn crop and leave the other 4 million tons in uncertainty and in the face of the voracity of buyers.
If, on the contrary, SEGALMEX had given extraordinary support of $1,500 for the 6 million tons of corn, the cost would have been 9,000 million pesos and 100% of state production would have been protected.
DESTINED TO FAIL. As of today, large buyers like Cargill are offering around $4,800 per ton of corn, while other companies in central and northern Sinaloa are paying between $5,000 and $5,200 per ton, and field cagers are selling at $5,500.
The low prices are the indicator that the new marketing strategy is an absolute failure and we are already in the middle of the month of June, when the harvest is generalized, which will end in the first days of July.
The only way to prevent almost 7,000 corn producers from going bankrupt and that the state economy stops receiving around 6,000 million pesos, is that the Federal Government provides extraordinary support that compensates the difference between the aspiration of the producers and the price that the industrialists are paying.
Therefore, I ask you dear reader: Do you think that the Federal Government is going to buy the other 1 million tons that the producers requested?
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