Peru's newly-inaugurated Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation Jose Manuel Hernandez has outlined the goals set by his administration. The ambitious list of goals includes diminishing poverty through agriculture, increasing agro-exports and providing farmers with more training.
Hernandez informed Andina news agency of a number of goals, here are some of them:
• Mitigate the sector's impacts caused by frequent climate phenomena (floods, frosts and droughts) with constant prevention programs. The budget for these actions is expected to double.
• Provide technology and technical training to farmers through Serviagro program — set to be ready within the first 100 days of Hernandez' administration.
• Achieve an agriculture and livestock GDP growth rate of 5.0% by 2021, driven by a better performance of the agro activity resulting from adopting effective prevention policies.
• See agro-exports increase to US$10 billion through 2021 by making greater use of trade agreements and improving the performance of the National Service for Agricultural Sanitation—Senasa.
• Implement an aggressive program of improved, high-quality seeds to upgrade small producers' crops through the National Agricultural Innovation Institute—INIA.
• Diminish poverty rates in agriculture by reducing dependence on subsistence farming while increasing the number of producers that serve national markets.
