The former Minister of Agriculture, Antonio Walker, gave his support to Esteban Valenzuela as the future head of the portfolio in the government of Gabriel Boric. This after the deputy Alejandra Sepúlveda (FRVS) questioned the appointment of her own partner in the political shop.
The deputy of the Social Green Regionalist Federation (FRVS), Alejandra Sepúlveda, charged that Valenzuela “does not meet the technical conditions” to take office. And he argued that “although it is from the federation, it was not the proposal for Minister of Agriculture that the party had made.”
“Anyway, we wish the whole cabinet a very good time and fundamentally, we hope it will do a great job, and we will be trying to support each one in their place,” said Deputy Sepúlveda.
It is worth mentioning that in the Ministry of Agriculture, the next head of state appointed the former mayor of Rancagua and deputy for the 32nd district of the O’Higgins region. Valenzuela is also a journalist, political scientist and historian. He was also union adviser and head of communications at the Center for Democratic Studies of Latin America (Cedal) and director of the Regionalist Convergences of Applied Studies of the South (Creasur).
Former minister Walker gave his support to Valenzuela as former head of the Agriculture portfolio under the second government of President Sebastián Piñera and assured that the former mayor has an advantage, since he comes from the O’Higgins region and was mayor of Rancagua.
“O’Higgins is the most important region of Chilean agriculture, it is the one with the largest agricultural GDP in Chile, that is an advantage, since I understand that he has been mayor and has been very close to peasant agriculture and that is positive,” Walker told Radio Biobio.
Valenzuela also added the support of the vegetable union, the Association of Fruit Exporters of Chile (Asoex), from where Ronald Bown, president of the organization, invited the future ministerial portfolio to meet to talk to make their concerns known. .
On March 11, Esteban Valenzuela will take office as Minister of Agriculture, where the challenges, according to Walker, include complementing the national rural development policy to eliminate the gaps between the urban and rural worlds, promote associativity for small farmers and food security for Chile.