Following demonstrations for lack of food by residents of El Bosque and La Pintana, the former president of the Chamber of Deputies, Ivan Flores (DC) called on the Government to make a food crisis committee “urgently” to prevent food shortages in the country.
In this sense, Flores also took advantage of placing the Minister of Agriculture, Antonio Walker. “When we have a Minister of Agriculture who says that prices are not going to go up and that supply is insured, he’s not saying what’s really going on. Chile is in a vulnerable situation,” he said.
MS. D.C. added that to the decline in incomes of thousands of families resulting from the pandemic, “we will add a problem that will affect the whole country and I mean food shortages; if urgent action is not taken to ensure essential production in the country.”
To address the above, he called for the creation of a Food Crisis Committee in the country and advanced the start of the “Chile Feeding Chile” campaign, to save domestic production and face what he called “a serious and close threat”.
In this regard, he noted that “the measures announced by the Government have been insufficient, and we are already seeing it with an alarming decrease in income, even multiplying the common pots, but there is something that concerns us as well and that may be even worse and that we have to warn it so that the country knows.”
“It’s hard no longer to have money to buy food and keep the family safe, but much harder it could be if even if there’s no food to buy, and that’s what’s starting to look at the global food market, and Chile won’t be an exception,” he said.
In this sense, Flores argued that “our country was always able to produce basic food for its citizens, but it turns out that in different governments we have not been able to generate the conditions for domestic competition in Chile to be fair competition”.
With regard to the above, in the opinion of the Parliamentarian “we have had unfair competition that has favoured the business of some importers and countries that sell products to countries like ours, and which sell them with bonuses”.
“We are asking the President of the Republic directly, together with a group of southern trade union associations who are producers of grains, meat and milk; that the tools and resources are generated to reach producers and consumers directly, in this scenario we must make a Food Crisis Committee, with the Government at the helm, with the Ministers of the area, with the trade union associations that it wants to produce but are not able because the financial institutions are not delivering the credits against harvest , if not 30 days,” he concluded.
 calls on the Government to organize a Food Crisis Committee in a “urgent” way){kind=link}