The Government seeks to face a severe drought through measures such as granting credits to producers, debt refinancing and postponement of maturities, as well as the purchase of seeds for small farmers.
Source: EFE
This was announced by the Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, Santiago Moisés Bertoni, in statements to the AgroAmérica program of the Brazilian channel TV AgroMais, also released this Tuesday by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), based in Costa Rica.
“The Paraguayan farmer always gets ahead, as he has shown many times in very difficult situations. We are working hard so that this is not only a bad memory in the short term, but also constitutes an opportunity for the implementation of better solutions for agricultural production”, said Bertoni.
The drought has caused a decline in the Paraná river basin for more than two years, and has also affected economic activity in Brazil and Argentina, as well as Paraguay, explained IICA.
“Ours is an eminently agricultural country and, unlike other countries in the region, we do not have a seacoast. Due to our distance from the sea, we have to import supplies and export our production with a significant cost overrun. Lately, the lack of rain has affected our main export product, which is soybeans,” said Minister Bertoni.
The minister explained that our country has a planted area of 3.2 million hectares severely impacted by the drought and estimated that there is a reduction in production of between 50% and 60%.
“This year we will probably have the worst harvest since large-scale agriculture began,” warned the minister, who also said that the livestock sector has been affected.
Bertoni recognized that the Paraguayan economy depends heavily on river transport through the Paraná and Paraguay rivers, which has been very difficult in recent times due to the drop in flows.
The minister also highlighted the importance of new technologies to improve agricultural production and make it more resilient, as well as cooperation between countries and organizations such as IICA.
“We must have strong positions in international forums and add other producing countries from other regions, who have the same vision, so that the productive interests of the region are considered in the negotiations and we can collaborate with the sustainable production of food for the world. ”, he pointed.
