After his meeting with the temporary president of the Governing Council of the Pact for Mexico and national leader of the PAN [National Action Party], Gustavo Madero, the spokesperson for the Broad Campesino Front (FAC), Alfonso Ramírez Cuellar, informed La Jornada that next Monday the country's various small farmer groups are beginning discussions with the federal government for a New National Agreement for the Countryside.
The meeting will be headed by the head of Government Relations, [Secretary] Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, and attended by the Secretaries of Finance, Agriculture, Social Development (SEDESOL) and Agricultural Development.
Also attending will be the national leaders of the PRI [Party of the Institutional Revolution], the PAN and PRD [Party of the Democratic Revolution], as well as legislators from the federal Congress.
In an interview, Ramírez Cuellar pointed out that it is anticipated that an advisory board will be created made up of experts from the National Autonomous University of Mexico [UNAM], the Autonomous University of Chapingo, research institutes from both chambers of the federal Congress and the public health institutes that make up the Alliance for Food Health. Their participation is to give added strength to the fight against malnutrition in the country and to fight diabetes and obesity, he said.
At the meeting designed to lay the foundation for a national dialogue in order to construct a grand bargain for the countryside, five panels will be set up. Panel members will deliberate from June to August. Themes to be addressed by the panels are:
- Food security and production;
- Establishment of a production program for beans, corn, wheat, rice, meat and milk;
- Rearrangement of agri-food markets to suppress the monopolistic practices that are raising product prices;
- Program of investments from 2013 to 2018;
- Financial reform, including the establishment of a national banking system for development; and
- Establishment of an agricultural bank to replace Fira, FIRCO, Financiera Rural, among other financial institutions sector, in order to have a bank of encouragement and unique social development.
A joint board to be established on Monday will address the
"deliberate under-spending by the federal government of 75 billion pesos [5.6 billion USD], a situation that has affected the country's economic activities."Ramirez Cuellar emphasized that he
"has not seen such a level of under-spending since the time of Carlos Salinas de Gortari [former president, 1988-1994; signed NAFTA]."Another issue is the
"increase in prices from 40 to 70 percent of basic consumer goods (tortillas, eggs, milk and others) which the Crusade for Hunger has hidden."