2023-11-17 15:34:14
By PST-Peru
Orlando Huanqui Guerra is president of the Arequipa Irrigation Users Board. Recently interviewed by the portal Public Eye Regarding the agrarian situation in the south, he said the following:
“In the month of April, the shortage of water in the dam system forced farmers to reduce the irrigation of their crops by between 5% and 10%. Now, in the sowing that began in August, the campaign was reduced by at least 30%.” And he adds: the situation is worsening because high temperatures dry out the soil more, demanding more water, which there is not, at the same time causing the appearance of new pests, affecting potato production. [i]
In another interview conducted by the same medium, this time with Eusebio Ramírez Li, from the Board of Irrigation Users of Santa (Ancash), he narrates almost the same thing about what is happening in the agrarian north: the intense rains of the first quarter of the year they flooded crop lands and destroyed an aqueduct that irrigated 900 agricultural hectares, and the delay in its reconstruction has led to the loss of bean crops, sweet potatoes, corn and cotton.
This reality, which is what the entire national agriculture experiences, was described by the president of the Central Reserve Bank himself, Julio Velarde (considered “best banker in the Americas” by Financial Times) in the presentation he made a few weeks ago in the Congress of the Republic, as “the worst crisis in the last 26 years.” And he added: “that the situation could be even worse in the coming months.” [ii]
The poor of the countryside
According to official information from Minagri, in the first half of this year, agriculture fell 3.4%, the largest since 1997, and planted areas were reduced by 10.5%.
However, considering only family farming, this is those that produce for their own consumption or for residual sale to the local market and which includes 2 million poor farmers and who have a high component of women as heads of family, the The tragedy he is experiencing is much greater.
Secularly poor because they work small areas in high Andean areas and in inhospitable environments, if not “beneficiaries” of Velazco’s Agrarian Reform that was limited to distributing the land creating new poor people, their tragedy began with the pandemic when they saw their small crops disappear. and savings.
With the pandemic, managed by the same State that prioritized the protection of large capitalists over the rest of the population, poverty in this sector doubled from 20 to 40%. A true catastrophe.
This explains why this same sector rallied to support Pedro Castillo in the 2021 elections, and then fought hard against his dismissal between December and the beginning of this year. They did it not because they were “terrorists” or “violent”, but rather because they were looking for a way out.
However, his situation would not improve. On the contrary, it worsened under the same Castillo administration that not only flouted its promises with its demagogic “second agrarian reform” law that did not introduce real changes and solutions and that no one remembers today, but also by its absolute incompetence to face the global fertilizer crisis, caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine since January 2022, and which seriously affected the countryside.
Government Responsibility
Under the Boluarte government, the tragic situation of the poor countryside has only worsened. The government adds to its incompetence to face the climatic impacts of El Niño and Yaku, its own contempt for the field from which the struggle that demands its resignation comes. The government distributes bonuses poorly, late or never, with pure clientelistic style. It does not even execute the budgets it assigns. Now the situation is getting worse with the general economic recession that has begun and the total improvisation in the face of the new El Niño that is already on its way and that promises to be more terrible, for whose consequences the government is and will also be responsible.
In this way, we have arrived at the current situation that is most similar to a catastrophe, the worst in many years, and which is similar to what all working and popular sectors are experiencing. In particular, it hits those that have struggled the most, such as the areas of the Puno highlands that are now suffering from drought. Given this, there is nothing left to do but fight, now for survival.
The communal, peasant and popular organizations that mobilized and fought bravely against the Boluarte government and its Congress of gangsters, are now faced with the challenge of resuming the fight by incorporating into their program the demands that urgently arise from the poor countryside: assistance in the face of the agrarian emergency and climate, delivery of property titles, total forgiveness of debts, improved seeds, cheap credit, technical help, irrigation works and roads.
All this together with the workers’ and popular demands for employment, salary increases and labor rights, and for definitively ousting the Government and Congress, which every day lead us to a greater catastrophe while promoting persecutory and criminal policies against those they fight.
[i] Public Eye. The historical crisis in agriculture impacts and threatens family farming. https://ojo-publico.com/derechos-humanos/la-crisis-historica-del-agro-impacta-y-amenaza-la-agricultura-familiar#:~:text=5%20Noviembre%2C%202023-,La%20crisis%20hist%C3%B3rica%20del%20agro%20en%20Per%C3%BA%20impacta%20y%20amenaza,m%C3%A1s%20fuerte%20registrada%20desde%201997.
[ii] Idem
#Government #sinks #family #farming