“If I wanted to replace that corn with planted Colombian corn, I would have 1,200,000 more jobs and the Banco Agrario would have to give the credit to those peasants and producers, but we would have 1,200,000 more jobs, that is, work, that is, wealth. Why can’t I do it? because the Free Trade Agreement with the United States that they signed a few years ago prohibits me, ”he explained.
“In 50 years lived, where the country forgot coffee and forgot cassava and corn, even, having appeared the first contact of the human being with corn in Colombia, a thousand years ago. Being that the cereal of the indigenous communities, very powerful because it is the American cereal, it was as powerful as European wheat, like Asian rice, discovered by human beings in the jungles of Colombia and become our fundamental nutrient, today we import almost all the corn from the United States and Canada.
“We have to return to the world of production, of work, and work and production is urban and rural. And, fundamentally, its heart, if it beats well, expands into agriculture and industry, ”he noted.
“Of course, extracting a barrel of oil, bringing a multinational company to extract it and give us the income, well, why do we need knowledge? That is why in 50 years the public university did not develop. The National University is still the same National University with the same number of students, but with fallen buildings because knowledge was not needed to live on income, ”he added.
“If we are going to start producing motorcycles, cars, refrigerators and televisions, solar panels, then we need knowledge. That means that we have to strengthen the public university ”, he added.
“The political moment in the United States is not the best for a renegotiation. Let’s look at the experience of Mexico. Mexico did not do well in that renegotiation. She lost things she had. The ministers accepted that it was not possible to speak of renegotiation, but of revision. The review can be done in the terms in which the agreement is foreseen ”, he affirmed.
