The Minister of Agrarian Development and Irrigation, Andrés Alencastre, explained that the difficult international agricultural context affects Peru due to its primary-export relationship and specifically agriculture due to the variation in international prices. In these conditions, he pointed out that “an emergency box is generated” that must be faced.
“The emergency is not to think for another minute, but to attend to everything that is involved in this issue,” he said in an interview with RPP News.
Along these lines, he specified that the agricultural crisis is focused on the fertilization of the fields due to the use of currently scarce products, such as guano, urea and organic fertilizers. The minister assured that this product diversification “is a priority” with the completion of contracts for the arrival “in a peremptory period” of urea purchased with 348 million soles.
Acquisition of urea and its arrival in the country
The minister highlighted that there is currently a downward trend in the prices of fertilizers, particularly urea. On this basis, he indicated that the 348 million soles provided by the Government would reach between 80,000 and 106,000 tons of urea in a first acquisition to attend to the emergency, which should be distributed to the field before August.
“We have a fairly heterogeneous agriculture. This urea that arrives, with all the emergency decree, is for agricultural units smaller than 5 hectares. Those that are larger will have their relationship with the market, and we already have the news that the private warehouses they have enough to attend to agriculture of more than 5 hectares,” he explained.
“We also have 17,000 tons of guano from the island and a decision to increase 20,000 tons to serve. We are in talks so that there is a supply of 60,000 tons for fertilizers and organic fertilizers. With that cluster we could serve what would be the units smaller than 5 (hectares) that have the main crops,” he added.
Alencastre avoided commenting on the recent cancellation of a bidding process due to the lack of bidders because it is something that happened before his administration; however, he pointed out that it has been urgently restructured to obtain a schedule, which indicates that the first shipment of urea must arrive in Peru before July 11.
“The decisions have had to be adjusted to the category of red, which is the imminent urgency so as not to modify the calendar of the sowing tasks for the 2022 and 2023 period,” he said.
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