IRAPUATO. Víctor Villalobos Arámbula, head of the Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development (Sader)assured that 2023 was one of the years with the least rain in the last two decades, as it rained less than half of what was predicted, in addition to last September being the driest month in the country since 1942.
During his visit to Irapuato, within the framework of the inauguration of the 28th edition of the Agri-Food ExpoVíctor Villalobos Arámbula assured that the climate change has become one of the main enemies of the Mexican countryside, since phenomena such as drought puts food production at risk in the country.
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“The theme of water continues to be a factor that increasingly marks the need to change our practices agricultural and that is the task, to continue preparing because the future of agriculture is increasingly difficult to predict (…) last September was the hottest on record, with a temperature almost three degrees higher than the historical average. The average temperature observed in our country amounted to 26.7 degrees, while the climatological average is 23.8 degrees, according to the National Meteorological Service,” he said.
He added that the recorded rainfall was 53 percent less than that of the 1991-2020 period, with severe drought episodes in most of the national territory, “therefore, in this context, climate change is the most important external factor of our days and to which agriculture is especially vulnerable,” said the federal official.
According to Drought Monitor of the National Water Commission, in its most recent cut dated October 31, 1,614 municipalities in the country, equivalent to 65.3 percent of the total Mexican land, present some drought condition; 34 have exceptional drought, 516 have extreme drought, 462 have soils with severe drought and 597 have moderate drought.
Villalobos Arámbula commented that for this reason in the Sader they are carrying out emerging stocks to address climate change and thereby adapt to this other new reality, which is to produce food with little natural resources and in fewer spaces.
“As a particular action and like never before, we have placed special emphasis on the care and especially the conservation of agricultural soils and we launched the National Soil Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture, with which Mexico became a precursor of the comprehensive policy that ensures the care of resources and contributes to guaranteeing the sustainability of the ecosystem services that soils present for current agriculture and the agriculture of the future,” he said.
The head of Sader explained that they are also carrying out programs such as Soil Doctors and the National Plant Nutrition and Soil Fertility Conservation Programin order to address the problems caused by having increasingly dry soils or soils with lower humidity, but which must continue to produce food.
“The academy collaborates in these public policies and the largest number of actors in our sector increasingly participate. agri-food”.
He explained that there is also the Strategic Plan for Climate Change of the Agri-Food Sector“whose objective is to achieve a productive agri-food system, a fair, inclusive, sustainable and down in the greenhouse gas emissions and resilient to the effects of climate change.”
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“The objective of all this is to ensure the sustainability of the resources of the primary sector and increase the productivity to ensure the nutrition of future generations, but applying good agricultural, livestock and fishing practices from now on,” he said.
He pointed out that despite the complications for agricultural production, Mexico has placed itself in seventh place as a food exporter in the worldsince it sells to 191 nations that demand every day the products that are generated in the Mexican countryside.