Monday, August 11, 2014

Mexican Farming and Agricultural Area Reforms are Expected

Víctor Chávez (El Financiero)

Parliamentary leaders in the Chamber of Deputies are taking on countryside [farm areas] reform as one of their priorities for the regular session of Congress that begins next September.

The chairman of the Political Coordination Junta, and coordinator of the PRD, Silvano Aureoles, said that "once the energy and telecommunications reforms are completed, those for the countryside will follow, which is what we expect to [decide] in the coming days in the Chamber."

This reform, he added, will be accompanied by others that are pending such as health, and above all finishing those on anti-corruption, privileges and immunity, bail and bonds, and the law on financial discipline that has to do with the debts of states and municipalities.

The President of the Chamber of Deputies, PAN member José González Morfín, said that "this is the legislature of major reforms for Mexico, and I am confident that it will close that cycle with one that will transform the Mexican countryside."

He said that the new agriculture/food policy should be amply discussed in this Chamber and by society. "The legislative task demands that we have the most accurate technical information at the time of proposing new laws to boost the country's rural development," he said.

He said that various forums have been initiated within and outside the legislature, with the intent to contribute proposals to the reform bill on the countryside "that the federal government will present in coming months."

PRI federal deputy Rubén Escajeda Jiménez, of Durango, the coordinator of federal representatives from the National Campesina Confederation, confirmed that "we are waiting for the proposal of the federal government, which it promised for 2014, in order to promote a major reform of the Mexican countryside where current production levels are very low."

"It is no longer a time for diagnosis, we have more than 20 years with an obsolete model and political discourse regarding the countryside has already been exhausted; it is time to act with solutions," said Marco Antonio González Valdez, chairman of the Chamber of Deputies' committee regarding the Studies Center for Rural Development, [and] Food Sustainability and Sovereignty (CEDRSSA).

Juan Antonio Medrano Agüero, from the Central Committee of the Coalition of Urban and Peasant Democratic Organizations A.C. (CODUC), proposed the creation of a National Bank of Agricultural Development, to serve producers in general: small, medium and large, in a fair and equitable manner, as well as changing the country's food policy: "no more imports."

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"Es el turno de la Reforma Legislativa al Campo Mexicano," El Financiero, Mexico City, Aug. 7, 2014; edited translation by MexiData.info