Having accompanied President Enrique Peña Nieto to the launch of his National Crusade Against Hunger in Chiapas this week, Jalisco Governor-elect Aristoteles Sandoval has prepared a plan to eradicate hunger in his state.
Sandoval’s Food Safety Project will establish food banks to support small producers in areas of extreme poverty, thus ensuring a low-cost food supply.
According to the National Council for Evaluation of Social Development Policy (Coneval), 1,627,900 people in Jalisco (22.1 percent of the state population) did not have adequate access to basic food supplies in 2010. The worst hit municipality was Union de San Antonio in Los Altos de Jalisco, where 46.5 percent of the population suffered from food shortages.Nationwide, some 28 million people went hungry that year, equivalent to one of every four Mexicans. Hunger was exacerbated across Mexico from 2005 to 2010, as the cost of the basic food basket known as the “canasta” shot up by 61.4 percent in urban areas and 59.8 percent in rural areas.
According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 23 Mexicans die every day from starvation or malnutrition, almost one every hour. INEGI revealed this week that 102,568 people died from nutritional deficiencies from 2000 to 2011, an average of 8,547 deaths per year.
To combat this problem, Peña Nieto announced the National Crusade Against Hunger announced on Monday. Part of the National Program to Combat Poverty established in the Pact for Mexico signed by the country’s three major parties in December, the program will focus on eliminating child malnutrition and uniting the three levels of government to protect the most vulnerable members of society.
The campaign is supported by major companies such as Wal-Mart, Bimbo and Maseca, as well as universities, schools, farmers, small producers and international organizations.