AMLO: inflation, like the pandemic, must be faced with unity

Eirinet Gomez and Martin Hernandez

Correspondent and La Jornada de Oriente

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday May 15, 2022, p. 7

Before producers and workers in the fields of Veracruz and Puebla, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador maintained that to fight against inflation is to fight poverty, it is to guarantee that income yields more. He launched a call to sow food from the basic basket for self-consumption, as part of the strategy to contain the increase in prices of products such as beans and corn.

In Puebla, when launching the Center-South Production Conference for Self-consumption, López Obrador stressed that planting for this purpose is a tradition that comes from far behind, which will now serve to face inflation and famine. He called on small producers and peasants to get involved in the strategy.

From Boca del Río, Veracruz, where he kicked off the conference for the south-southeast zone, he said that the country must face inflation as it faced the pandemic: with unity. He explained that the rise in prices experienced in Mexico is a new external challenge that did not arise here, but derived from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as from the failure in the management of economic policy.

The politicians of the powers in the world, such as the United Nations, who could not avoid the war, have been crossed out. They closed, there was no dialogue.

The lack of understanding to avoid hostilities, he pointed out, affected the world, since not only innocent people lose their lives, many of whom have to leave their towns, but the global economy is also affected.

In front of an audience of 3,200 field technicians from Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Yucatán and Veracruz, he affirmed that the purpose of the meeting is to join forces and wills to face the challenge of inflation, which has affected the economy of Europe, the United States and Mexico.

In the country, he acknowledged, the strongest problem in this regard is concentrated in food prices, since it is 3.6 percent, while in the United States it reaches 1.3. In food is where we are at the top, we need to face it.

His government, he commented, has placed emphasis on reinforcing the self-consumption production system. “That we can plant corn, beans, rice, what we consume. Who can we do that with? Well, with peasants, women and men.

If we do not produce what we consume, we will always be dependent on foreigners. With the world crisis, maritime freight alone has increased 10 times for basic products and merchandise, 10 times. It is logical that the best thing is to produce what we consume, and if we go to scale, it is best to start with self-consumption.

He added: We have to tell those of the Sembrando Vida program that if they are planting citrus or timber trees, that they interplant, that they plant corn and beans for self-consumption.

In the afternoon, in Puebla, before officials from all dependencies, from the sectors involved in the attention to the field of that entity, as well as from Hidalgo, Tlaxcala and Veracruz, the federal president explained that there will be free provision of fertilizer for farmers, as is the case in Guerrero, where thanks to that government support it was possible to double corn production in just one year.

López Obrador stressed that, based on the family unit, culture has saved us from all calamities. Through cultures we get ahead in the face of tremors, hurricanes, poverty, bad governments, corruption; we resist everything for our cultures, but culture is not the same as education. There are those who reach a postgraduate level and abandon their traditions; they abandon their origin, they are ashamed, they become ladino and they think that it is a backwardness to belong to an original culture, when that is what gives us the greatness of Mexico.

He explained that the guarantee prices for corn and beans will be maintained at 6,438 and 16,000 pesos per ton, respectively, highlighting that at the beginning of this six-year term, six pesos per ton were paid for the latter. It may be that (the peasants) do not sell us corn or beans because they are paid more dearlyexpressed the head of the Executive in a celebratory tone, adding that the guaranteed prices will be maintained anyway because if we remove them, then the coyotes, who are very advantageous, will want to pay less. That’s why we’re going to keep them..

He also highlighted that in the pandemic the industrial, commerce and services sectors fell, while the food production sector grew.

Meanwhile, the undersecretary of Productive Inclusion and Rural Development of the Welfare Secretariat, Raúl Paulín, announcing a set of actions to support the program, including meetings of producers with agronomists, extension workers and specialized personnel in rural production, said that a comic prepared by Rafael Barajas will be distributed the nosy that explains the scope of these conferences and the support measures for the countryside.