The Sustainable Barley Innovation Program (PICES) offers support to the farmer to provide better technologies available in the sector and thus seek to have the best yields, income and obtain a higher quality barley grain for Heineken beers.
“We sowed barley for more than 100 years here in Mexico and what we observe of agricultural practices in Mexico and comparing them with other countries, is that there is a great difference mainly in the use of technologies”, Alberto commented in an interview for El Economista Máynez Gutiérrez, director of supplies for Heineken México.
In collaboration with John Deere, Syngenta and Yara, this initiative in the field seeks to sustainably impact the agricultural sector in Mexico.
The barley harvest is very important in the states of Hidalgo, Puebla, Tlaxcala, the State of Mexico and Guanajuato.
The benefits of PICES
With the Program, financing is offered to farmers, agricultural insurance, machinery, and accompaniment work is done with specialized personnel from the moment of sowing to harvest.
“Environmentally, we seek to take care of the soils to control the carbon footprint,” Javier Valdés, general director of Syngenta México and LAN, said in an interview.
The technology for sustainable and sustainable cultivation
With the new and improved agricultural techniques that implement a specialized and technological team for the care of the environment, in the activities of reproduction, tillage, conservation or minimum tillage, “we are looking for the farmer not to move the land so much, that helps to fix the carbon in the soil and have better nutrients ”, explained Valdés from Syngenta México.
This has an important benefit in the uptake of water and organic matter in the soil; the water stays in the ground and is not filtered. “We are looking for crops that have less chemical load and fertilization technologies through soil analysis, what the soil has only complements itself. This way the fertilizer management is more efficient ”, so the soil is not contaminated unnecessarily, in addition to prioritizing water management.
The creators of this initiative look forward to the example of countries such as France or the United States that are large producers of barley, which have already adopted sustainable technologies that have increased farmers’ yields.
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