Blockade on the north route limits the passage of cane to the Guabirá sugar mill and fluid milk to the PIL Andina collection plant

We are tired, two blockades in less than 15 days in the same place, it is an attack on the productive economy and food security. Thus, an agro-industrialist from Montero lashed out against a group of residents of San Pedro, who have been blocking the new highway to Cochabamba since Tuesday, height of the Friendship bridge, demanding the clarification of the death of two people in the Santagro agricultural property, taken over by a group of people from productive, social and union organizations related to the ruling party.

The industrialist expressed that there is a general malaise of producers sugarcane farmers and milkmen from Montero and Portachuelo, They warn against intervening in the blockade, which for two consecutive days limits the passage of raw material (cane) to the Guabirá mill, whose base of operations is Montero.

Likewise, he expressed that the milkmen who deliver fluid milk to the PIL Andina collection center in Warnes are also affected. “There are two blockades, in less than two weeks, due to issues that affect other productive areas, because they do not go and block their area and do not harm those who have nothing to do with their protest” said the industrialist.

Sources from the Guabirá mill specified that it is unfortunate that the industry is harmed precisely at the peak of harvesting and cane milling due to an external factor, not linked to what makes the sugar sector productive. They reported a decrease in the availability of cane to grind due to the blockade on the Friendship bridge, between Montero and Portachuelo.

This last municipality is highly productive of sugar cane, milk and strategic grains. “They are putting food security at risk by preventing the passage of cane to produce sugar and milk, two foods of massive consumption on Bolivian tables”, they expressed.

In the case of dairy production, from the Departmental Federation of Milk Producers (Fedeple), President Eduardo Cibrián Vaca Diez, lamented the social protest when realizing that the effect translates into the impossibility of delivering at least 120,000 liters of milk daily to the collection plant of the PIL Andina industry for processing.

“They have turned the blockade into a routine and the Friendship Bridge into a ‘bottleneck’ that prevents the passage of food to the markets of Santa Cruz and the interior of the country,” he said, specifying that the four-day blockade has been two weeks, It left an economic loss for small producers in the dairy basin of the Sara and Ichilo provinces, estimated at $250,000.