The Rice Growers Committees of Yopal and Aguazul rejected the statements given to the press by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Jhenifer Mojica on Wednesday, September 6, in which she described the rice producers of the Casanare department as “multimillionaires.”
According to the rice growers, the statement made by the Minister in these terms and the reference she used also disqualifying the protests that the Casanareño producers carried out in recent months to demand attention from the government, is nothing other than a lack of knowledge of the importance of activity that they have been carrying out for many years to generate employment and economic development in a large part of the plains territory, but also creates unfair and dangerous stigmatization, which threatens the safety of those who work legally in the field.
Over the years, rice producers in this part of the country have been consolidating an economic activity that represents not only income to the department, but to thousands of people who derive their livelihood from rice cultivation and who contribute a high percentage to the food sovereignty of the Nation.
The producers point out in the document that it is a productive activity that they have had to develop in the midst of multiple difficulties of all kinds, from difficult conditions due to insecurity, to the enormous neglect of governments in terms of road infrastructure, such as as is currently happening, where the main route for transporting inputs and evacuating the harvest is interrupted by the fall of the bridge between Pajarito and Aguazul.
“The Minister cannot disqualify an economic sector with great potential such as rice farming, which has had to work in the midst of ignorance from the State and exposed to attacks by violent people. His words place us even more at risk, which is absurd, coming from someone who must focus all his efforts on strengthening a sector of great importance in the national agriculture such as rice and protecting its farmers,” they emphasize in the letter.
The rice producing sector of Casanare requested the Minister of Agriculture to rectify the erroneous statements that affect the rice sector of Casanare and the entire country.
Rice producers reiterate that they are not billionaires, they are farm workers who, with selflessness and sacrifice, have been acquiring assets, most of which are committed to banks, and they end by making it clear that the majority do not have access to land. own, but at their own risk, they keep alive a sector that makes it possible for the main product of the diet to be available to all Colombians.
Source: FEDERARROZ