Castillo launches Peru’s 2nd agrarian reform, stresses he does not seek to “expropriate land or affect rights”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The President of Peru, Pedro Castillo, has launched this Sunday (03) the second agrarian reform in the country’s history, about which he has clarified that “it does not seek to expropriate land or affect property rights.”

In this context, the President has reported creating a Cabinet group focused on rural development and other measures to support Peruvian farmers, such as the purchase of fertilizers for crops or an adjustment on the prices of products, as reported by the local newspaper ‘La República’.

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This measure has been presented in the city of Cusco, and together with Castillo were present the President of the Council of Ministers, Guido Bellido; as well as the vice-president, Dina Boluarte; the person in charge of the Agriculture portfolio, Victor Maita; and other cabinet ministers.

“We are proposing to change the way of governing so that our State can put itself at the service of our family farmers who have been relegated for decades, government after government. This ends today,” stressed the President.

AGRICULTURAL CABINET AND AID FOR FERTILIZERS

Regarding the Agrarian Cabinet, he has advanced that it will be made up of “productive, infrastructure and social development ministries” and that it will have the participation of regional and local governors.

“From this Cabinet, policies for the rural and agrarian development of our country will be designed and promoted,” he said. One of these measures will be to modify the price range for fertilizers, a proposal already announced by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

“Despite our diversity and productive capacity, all these years of neglect have turned us into a country very dependent on imports (…) In the coming weeks, we will make adjustments to the price band to protect better domestic production from unfair competition from subsidized products imported from abroad,” explained Castillo.

In the same vein, the President has detailed the support program for the purchase of fertilizers for small farmers to cope with the rising price of these products.

The President regretted that Peru is dedicated to exporting phosphates as raw material for other nations to treat and then sell to Peruvian farmers when Peru is “the only country in the Pacific basin” with this organic compound.

“We have initiated studies to install a fertilizer production plant based on phosphates from (the locality of ) Bayóvar that we have in (the department of) Piura,” explained Castillo, who has ventured that the Peruvian market will become “an exporter of phosphate fertilizers in the region”.

In addition, the government has also announced the launching of a fund to support, with technification programs, the more than 700,000 women producers of agricultural goods throughout the country, according to the local newspaper ‘El Comercio’.

“This Government is respectful with the powers of the State, with the rights of the people, with the rights of the peasant woman (…) enough of hurting the Peruvian farmer,” he has asserted.

SOCIAL INCLUSION

According to the Peruvian Presidency, this agricultural policy seeks to “achieve greater social inclusion of more than 2.2 million small producers who come from family farming.”

Moreover, the launching date of this agrarian reform is not accidental since it coincides with the day on which Juan Velasco Alvarado carried out a coup d’état against President Fernando Belaúnde in 1958.

Under Velasco’s military regime, the Agrarian Reform was approved to grant property to the workers of large estates and haciendas by eliminating the “latifundia” through expropriations.