Welfare Production Program Reaches 84 Percent Progress: SADER

Víctor Villalobos, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER), reported that last June the Welfare Production Program registered an advance of 84 percent. This program aims at supporting small and medium grain producers of corn, flour wheat, beans, rice, coffee and sugar cane.

As part of the analysis of President López Obrador’s fourth State of the Union presented by SADER, Villalobos stressed that MX$12.8 billion (US$642.48 million) out of the MX$14.01 billion (US$702.71 million) allocated in the 2022 budget to this program had been already delivered during the first half of the year.

Villalobos explained that direct productive support went mostly to the production of corn, beans, wheat, rice, coffee, sugar cane, cocoa, honey, amaranth and chia, thus benefiting 1.8 million producers, of which 34 percent are women. In addition, the program has a prevalence in 1,033 municipalities with indigenous populations, while 61 percent of the supported producers are located in the southeast region of the country. 

Villalobos stated that 1.4 million Mexicans left the undernourished segment between 2018 and 2021. “According to the latest report on food and nutrition security by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), while in 2018 7.2 percent of Mexicans were in this situation, in 2021 the figure decreased to 6.1 percent,” he said.

During the presentation, Villalobos also commented on the advances made in the agrifood sector through other governmental programs. According to the Minister, as of Sept. 30, the Fertilizers for Welfare program has delivered this resource directly to 717,000 producers from Guerrero, Morelos, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Durango, Nayarit and Zacatecas, exceeding the goal set in the Inflation and Scarcity Package (PACIC) of 700,000 farmers. Likewise, between September 2021 and June 2022, the Guaranteed Prices program aimed at supplementing the income of small and medium agricultural producers of basic grains and milk, represented an economic spill equivalent to MX$6 billion (US$301.2 million) in favor of 67,741 small and medium producers of corn, beans, rice, bread wheat and milk. 

During his morning conference last week, President López Obrador highlighted that the implementation of programs such as Sembrando Vida and Welfare Production generate jobs and consolidate the purpose of achieving food self-sufficiency. “We are doing a good job and people support this,” he said.