Mexico is the fourth world producer of organic foods

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Oaxaca, Chiapas, Michoacán, Chihuahua and Nuevo León are the leading states in the area destined to sow these products, although the first three are the ones that concentrate 50% of the total land.

In Mexico, interest in organic foods is growing every day, since there is a greater awareness to adopt a healthy and quality life, said the president of the E Foundation, Samuel González Guzmán.

“It is an agricultural production system that promotes and improves the health of soils and ecosystems”, which is why entrepreneurs have turned to see it as a very profitable business alternative, he said in an interview with Notimex.

Mexico is the fourth producer of organic foods worldwide, with a surface area of just over one million hectares, according to data from the Agri-Food and Fisheries Information Service (SIAP).

Oaxaca, Chiapas, Michoacán, Chihuahua and Nuevo León are the leading states in the area destined to sow these products, although the first three are the ones that concentrate 50% of the total land.

And it is that they cultivate more than 45 organic foods, among them is the coffee, with 44,226 occupied hectares; safflower, with 10,805; avocado, with 9,804; corn, with 9,291, and agave, with 7,541.

The data show that Mexico is among the top 20 exporting countries, reaching 85% of the national production in the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Switzerland and Japan.

The SIAP -an organization of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development- points out that only sales to the United States increased 96.8%, going from 141.5 million dollars to 278.5 million dollars from 2015 to 2017.

“The boom” of the organics is due in part to the absence of fertilizers and other chemical substances during the production process, insisted the president of Fundación E, an organization focused on the generation of entrepreneurial culture in Mexican agriculture.

However, he acknowledged that this sector faces large industries, with high production volumes, and must find a way to lower their costs, because organic products are more expensive than conventional ones.

After compiling information in specialized stores and supermarkets in Mexico City, through the Who’s Who in Prices program, the Federal Consumer Attorney’s Office (Profeco) revealed that organics are between 11 and 337% more expensive than conventional ones.

“This is where the challenge lies”, insisted González Guzmán, who considered that producers can face this problem with the use of new technologies in crops.

He exemplified that those who grow vegetables from hydroponics – a technique that requires PVC pipes and water with nutrients without any type of substrate – could integrate elements to automate and, through the Internet, be aware of the needs of the harvest.

“This will allow breaking the paradigm of mass production of food, returning to the organic and with a competitive price and accessible to any pocket,” he argued.

He added that the development of applications will change the way to buy, because the freight to transport food is very high, because they move in low quantities.

González Guzmán has trained more than 10,000 young people in the country and expects at least 20% of them to materialize their technological projects to further boost agriculture and, with that, to further entrench that population to prevent their migration.

Source: Forbes

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