2023-11-01 13:00:00
Guadalajara Jalisco.
It is said that Jalisco is the State that most food generated in Mexico. And the figure that the authorities is 228 billion pesos a yearonly in this concept.
That figure is not less. To put it into dimension, It is equivalent to seven times the total cost of the construction of Line 3 of the Guadalajara Light Rail. Seven times!
However What does it mean That in non-monetary terms? That is, how much does it cost the land of our State to support that huge figure?
In 2022, three out of 10 corn producers stopped planting to plant agavesince tequila has a high demand in the foreign market.
Currently, the Jalisco countryside is undergoing a transformation that adapts to supply and demand. In this example: more tequila and less tortilla.
Meanwhile, in the speeches launched by both companies dedicated to the agri-food trade and politicians, the origin of the product is never shown. food that is consumed and importance that it has in health.
For example: Do you know where the banana you use to make a smoothie comes from? The strawberries you eat in the morning? How long do fruits and vegetables take to grow? With what quality of water are the fruits watered?
During the second International Agri-Food Congress A participating agribusiness company was questioned about how they create awareness among the population regarding the quality of their products.
“The message we have as a company is: frozen food is as good as fresh and with this we manage to extend the shelf life and availability of food towards people who, otherwise, would not be able to enjoy vegetables like us who are in a land with an excellent climate and have availability of vegetables all year round. Not everyone is like that. There are many parts of the world that spend many months under the snow and only through foods preserved by freezing can they receive the nutrients they need.
The message we give to reduce vegetable waste is to use frozen food, it is as good and nutritious as fresh food.”
Gardeners from Jalisco like Maricela Rosales Velazco and Gerardo Torres, who have their family gardens and sell part of what they produce on their land, seek to raise people’s awareness about the importance of eating chemical-free foods. Such is his commitment to the quality that his speech is: Food is your medicine.
“You go to the street markets but you don’t know where that food comes from.
Instead If you are growing them you know where that food comes from, you know what soil you are putting on them, how you make your fertilizers because everything is done here. Here you make compost, worms, violas. The land of Los Garcías is delicious because a lot of oak leaves fall and, since we don’t add grass, all that dry leaf that falls and the green leaf that we cut, that is compost.”
In Gerardo’s case, he worked for many years in the agribusiness and, upon seeing the way how the countryside was affected and the land was exploited, He chose to produce his own food.
“In another part of my life I worked in agriculture and in fact it was one of the reasons to be able to do things better.”
Because? What did you see?
-“Because any commercial crop where you plant large areas of a single crop, what you are doing as a producer is break the natural balance of insects”.
This lack of balance that Gerardo refers to impacts the beekeeping sector in the entity, which on several occasions has asked Congress to regulate agrochemicals. At the federal level, the reform of several laws is being discussed; for example the General Health Law, which seeks to prohibit high-impact pesticides because they kill thousands of bees a year and without bees, there is no pollination… and Without pollination, there is no food.
Another point that marks the difference between urban gardens and the big producers is the amount of waste. For the first ones there are none, there is no food that is thrown away because before it goes bad, is shared with the community or transformed into other products.
On the other hand, in agribusiness there is waste. If no one buys it, it spoils and is thrown away.
“Globally we produce more food than the world’s population needs, but a percentage becomes waste because its shelf life is short because have and “bad consumption habit.”
And here is something important: talking about waste is talking about social classes and the way resources are distributed: while some suffer from hunger, others throw food into the trash.
In Mexico it is estimated that the 6.4 percent of the population suffers from severe food insecurityy between five and 10 thousand people die every year from problems related to lack of food.
According to the latest report from the United Nations Environment Programme, in September 2022, more than 30 percent of the world’s available food is wasted. AND six out of every 10 kilos of these come from homes. A quarter is from food companies, and the remainder is from businesses that sell food.
But there are more differences that you should know between the food megaindustries and the urban gardens.
Don’t miss the fourth part of this special work. I’ll detail it for you there.
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#Urban #gardens #natural #medicine