Peña announces agrarian reform

Tuesday, 07 January 2014 00:10
BY MAURILIO SOTO
The News


President Enrique Peña Nieto on Monday commemorated the 99th anniversary of the Agrarian Law instituted by the former Constitutional Army of Gen. Venustiano Carranza, saying that this year will be one of profound reform for the Mexican countryside.

“I want to reiterate my commitment to driving profound agricultural reforms in 2014, which will bring agriculture up-to-date and make it more competitive,” he said.

Peña Nieto gave the speech in Veracruz, where Carranza had set the foundations for land reform in 1915. Before the 1910 revolution, land ownership in Mexico was concentrated in the hands of a small percentage of the population. Carranza helped create the geography of land ownership as it is known today.

Peña Nieto said that a great transformation in the agricultural sector legal framework will take place this year by means of farmers organizations and dialogue with legislators. He said that a modern and successful countryside is “essential” to achieving a prosperous nation, and that he will be a permanent ally of the sector so that farmers may reach dignified living conditions.

Peña Nieto said that 2014 will be a year that will “advance firmly and without truces in the materialization of everything that has been achieved” in 2013. “It should be a year that lets us bring about the instrumentation of the secondary legislation of the great constitutional changes that took place in 2013, and also new agendas that should also be promoted this year, especially the Mexican countryside,” he said.

He said that the Food Production Secretariat (Sagarpa) will exercise a budget of 82.9 billion pesos ($6.3 billion) this year, while 338.6 billion pesos ($25.8 billion) will be spent on the Mexican countryside through the Sustainable Rural Development Program.

He added that Sagarpa and the Economy Secretariat are joining forces in order to “harmonize” food supply and demand, saying, “This means counting on a control board to measure that there isn’t overproduction of one product in a season, affecting its price or creating a shortage in other products,” Peña Nieto said.

Mexico is on the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) list of 15 largest food-producing countries in world, but is also one of the Latin American Integration Association’s three countries with an agricultural product trade deficit due to its large agricultural exports and imports.