▲ After signing the minutes, the farmers removed the blockade they had installed since Tuesday outside the Sader. In a few days a commission will return to present the action plan.Photo Germán Canseco
Jared Laureles
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, November 13, 2025, p. 16
After more than 30 hours of a blockade in front of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Sader), and without reaching an agreement on their main demand, sugarcane growers agreed with Undersecretary Leonel Cota Montaño to set up a work table on Wednesday, November 19 to develop a rescue plan aimed at small producers.
Ruperto Ruiz Cortés, from the negotiating commission, indicated that they signed a minute with seven points, but that the request to grant them support of 300 pesos per ton of cane was not included.
He added that the Sader authorities asked them to prepare a care plan for small producers in which they must detail how many there are, the tons they grow and the hectares they own.
“At the moment, the 300 pesos are not there; we have to give an approach with numbers to tell the President of the Republic and see to what extent the availability is to support the demands that we are going to make,” he explained after the meeting he held with Cota Montaño and other officials that lasted three hours.
“We are going to do the approach both per ton and per hectare, but giving preference to those with the smallest surface area, which are, as they commonly say, the trash, which is the one that suffers the most,” said the also president of the September 9 Organization.
The sugarcane representatives, who called themselves “independents,” clarified that Sader’s proposal is that support be channeled to those who have less than five hectares. However, they indicated that they will evaluate it, since producers with a larger area can be taken into account.
Arturo Herviz Reyes, member of the Democratic Sugar Cane Unit, mentioned that 70 percent of the producers have less than five hectares and insisted that they do not rule out his proposal to give them support of 300 pesos per ton.
They explained that among the points agreed upon with Cota Montaño is the publication of a new decree to prevent the entry of “substances or food mixtures” that contain sugar, that is, that industries do not continue importing this sweetener disguised as colorants.
Also that they are working on a project with the purpose of converting sugar into ethanol and that they will begin a financing program in Veracruz and Michoacán for the reconversion of strains.
The minutes stipulated a system of spare parts and relief credits, with interest of 8.5 percent and a ceiling of up to 1.3 million pesos.
