Colombia’s agriculture minister said the farming sector could confront the international financial crisis by increasing the country’s food production.
Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo Salazar also said in an interview with Caracol Radio that eventually Colombia will have the capacity to provide food to the rest of the world, which is “expensive and in demand.”
Restrepo Salazar was describing the outcome for his sector of a meeting held Tuesday by President Juan Manuel Santos with government officials and representatives from industry, business, labor unions and trade organizations about how to protect Colombia from the repercussions of an international financial crisis.
This comes one day after the Ministry of Agriculture announced the first results of the Corn Country program, the aim of which is to reduce the importation of cereal.
In the first semester of 2011, the area planted with corn increased by 15%. It’s objective is to increase the area planted with yellow corn from 137,000 hectares in 2010 to 250,000 hectares at the end of 2014.