MEXICO: May 20, 2008
MEXICO CITY - Poor countries will struggle to produce more grain and help to
ease a global food crisis given many of their farmers abandoned their fields
due to stiff competition from rich nations, Mexican President Felipe
Calderon said.
Calderon said on Monday he discussed the surge in world food prices with
visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and he pledged to protect poor
families in Mexico, for whom corn tortillas are a staple food.
Calderon said Mexico's ability to produce more grain was limited as many
farmers abandoned their fields in recent years and fled to the United States
to seek work, unable to compete in Mexico with subsidized farms in wealthier
nations.
"For years, developing countries, in particular Mexico, faced the problem of
very high subsidies in the United States and Europe, and this drove a lot of
producers out of the competition in the Mexican countryside," Calderon said.
"This has meant that when we see this rise in world demand for food, the
reaction from the supply side is not as fast," he told a news conference,
flanked by Merkel.
Calderon criticized the use of food crops in biofuels, and Merkel said rich
nations should have seen the crisis coming.
Protests have broken out in dozens of poor countries as low world wheat
stocks and rice shortages drive price increases.
Mexico is eyeing a record 2008 corn crop for the second year in a row,
Calderon said, but that has not shielded it from soaring prices which
sparked street protests last year and are one of several factors fanning
inflation.
A small tortilla industry group warned last week that the price of the corn
patties could jump 40 percent in the weeks ahead in Mexico, where half the
population lives on $5 a day or less, although no such move has been felt
yet.
Calderon said his government was pumping money into boosting agricultural
output and would also support the poor.
"We are going to multiply and intensify our actions to help the poorest
people in Mexico with this sudden price increase."
(Reporting by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Christian Wiessner)
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
