Mexico City, Nov 12 (EFE) .- Mexican food production should increase by 60% towards 2050 amid population growth and the climate crisis, warned this Friday Juan Cortina Gallardo, president of the National Agricultural Council (CNA ).
“We have to increase food production by at least 60% or more by 2050 to meet this growing demand of the population and we must do it in an efficient and sustainable way,” said the business leader in the field.
Cortina Gallardo made these statements at the closing of the Global Agrifood Forum of Mexico, which brought together 36 speakers from 17 countries from four continents since Wednesday in a hybrid event in Irapuato, Guanajuato, in the center of the country.
The union representative stated that “climate change is a phenomenon that is sending continuous warning signals”, for which he urged to address it “immediately.”
“The scarcity of natural resources, soil degradation, recent droughts and lack of water are factors that necessarily make us rethink the way to harmonize our production to guarantee and cover current and future food needs,” he said.
The importance of the agri-food sector for Mexico is that it contributes 9.24% of the national economy and 9.5% of the country’s exports, according to the CNA.
The Mexican countryside contributes more than 40,000 million dollars in exports each year, which has placed Mexico as the tenth largest food producer in the world, according to the business organization.
But the countryside faces, like the world, a “triple crisis,” said Manuel Otero, director general of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).
The leader of the regional body elaborated that these challenges are the slowdown in the economy, the environmental crisis and the covid-19 pandemic, with about a third of global deaths occurring in America.
