The year 2024 will be the year of adjustments and revisions of some programs implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG), whose budget this year was reduced by 29.09% compared to 2023.

The head of that state portfolio, Danilo Palacios, reveals this, noting that the Ministry’s codified budget for 2024 dropped from $110 million (2023) to $78 million. The Secretary of State explains that of the $110 million allocated last year, only $84 million was earned, a figure close to the current codified budget, but still $6 million short. “Now we have 78 million dollars, it is not far from the amount that was spent (in 2022)”, the minister calculated.

Palacios admits that the budget of 78 million dollars “can’t be big”, but assures that they have identified where they have to act and where there are the greatest needs in the sector in order to be more effective with few resources.

What are the areas that MAG will prioritize? Minister Palacios predicts that one of the priority issues will be the National Agricultural Register (Renagro), for which the state portfolio will allocate 4.7 million dollars in 2024. The rest of the funding will come from public-private alliances. In 2022, it was announced that most of the funding for this process, estimated at $30 million, would come from the AFD, a public body that contributes to the practical implementation of French development policy and international solidarity, which signed an agreement with the Ministry of Finance to covering the total value of the enforcement against Renagro, which has not been carried out for 22 years.

In December, the National Agricultural Register will start working again, after 10 months of suspension

Three payments are foreseen, with a repayment period of 20 years, including a five-year grace period, with an indicative interest rate of 0.25% per year.

“The budget is focused on something very important, which is the issue of statistics about what we have here in the country… We have this deficiency here, we don’t really know what area we have for which culture. There is an estimated value when I arrived of 5.2 million hectares of all agricultural products, which is data that has a permissible error,” the minister admits.

Renagro already had a first phase, a pilot plan that was developed in the Galapagos Islands and included communication, socialization and information gathering between August and September 2022. While the processing and dissemination of information took place in November 2022. The results obtained were that in the Galapagos there are 1117 productive people in 1154 agricultural production units (UPA). The monitoring area is 24,528 ha. It was also possible to verify that the main crops in the area are bananas and coffee produced on the islands of Isabela, Santa Cruz and San Cristóbal.

In mainland Ecuador, the process was reactivated in the province of Tungurahua in December 2023 with the official presentation of the Register to representatives of 44 parish administrations and small and medium producers. It is indicated that the collection of information will begin between this month and next May with the support of the provincial government of Tungurahu.

Focus on connecting producers with the domestic market

Another area that this year’s budget will focus on will be the coordination of linking producers with internal markets or supermarkets. Minister Palacios indicates that MAG promoted programs to promote certain areas, sowing and cultivation, but admits that they forgot to connect producers with the national market. As an example, he cites the efforts of the Ministry of State to promote and encourage the planting of pitahaya, “but now we have nowhere to sell it,” laments Palacios.

“The supermarkets here in Ecuador want to be sure that they will have these products, that they will supply them throughout the year, that’s what we found, from the first day I entered the Ministry of Agriculture, the first thing I introduced myself to the markets was how I would find out what their situation is,” reveals Palacios.

Spot price of bananas: “We cannot prevent the release of our products when there is demand, because that would be worse”

He adds: “They agree to see how we connect that producer, let’s call it corn, rice, our main products, we make those connections.” The minister notes that the goal is to connect producers with the industry and eliminate middlemen or let them work formally.

Kit shipping will be reduced

In the meantime, just as there are priority areas, there are other programs that will be reviewed and that will have budget cuts. One of them is the delivery of agricultural kits to producers who are part of the National Production Incentives Project for the Agricultural Sector (PNIPSA).

“This issue of equipment is not important to me, or we have given it great importance, as we say: Don’t give him a fish, but teach him to fish. We have to work a lot on the issue of knowledge transfer, technology, which is what will really give the manufacturer the expertise to be sustainable over time and suddenly one of the things we could reduce to give more importance to what would be mainly needed would be the delivery of kits,” says Palacios .

Aided by an increase in the European Union, Ecuador’s banana exports closed 2023 with growth of up to 7.90%

The minister recognized that the sets were used politically and do not even cover the needs of producers who often sell and do not use them. “We will be very detailed in this delivery of the kit, first knowing if it is for that right producer and if that mixture or formula of the kit is for what he really needs, we will be very accurate in that delivery,” the minister said.