In January of this year alone, corn was imported for 410 million dollars (mdd), which represented an increase of more than 25% compared to the same month of 2021, when the figure was 305 million dollars.
During the first half of 2021, Mexico imported 30% of fertilizers from Russia, so the conflict with Ukraine may limit the global supply of these inputs by up to 25%, warned the president of the UMFFAAC, Luis Eduardo González Cepeda.
“The Mexican government is slowly facing the problem that the countryside is experiencing and that affects the entire country,” the UMFFACC and PROCCYT said in the statement.
Given that the federal government has recognized that Mexico will not be self-sufficient in the production of fertilizers, at least in this administration, “it will be irrelevant to consider the goal of food self-sufficiency if we are not able to reduce dependence on foreign countries and remain vulnerable to externalities such as of the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” said the executive director of PROCCYT, Cristian García de Paz.
The problem of fertilizers adds to the issue of drought and low catchment of dams in the country.
“It is urgent that the government take measures to reverse the current situation, for example, instructing the Federal Commission for the Protection of Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) to stop being a bottleneck with the more than 2,600 procedures that it has blocked and prevent the access to more modern and effective phytosanitary products and accelerate the steps to rebuild the fertilizer production plants”, requested González Cepeda.
The lack of phytosanitary inputs translates into higher costs for public finances. “Just last year the country imported agricultural products worth 26,555 million dollars, an increase of 40% compared to 2019, according to recent data released by the Department of Agriculture of that country. With that figure, the country could have built almost three refineries like the one in Dos Bocas,” said García Paz.
