Registration to Change in Mexico
12 July 2012 
Fernando Vera Hernández, president of the Asociación Latinoamericana de la Industria Nacional de Agroquímicos, shared his expertise and foresight on some recent developments in Mexico’s crop protection sector:
FCI: What are the top trends in herbicides, insecticides and fungicides?
1. Increasing use of safer products. There is a trend in the agricultural sector and among authorities to promote the use of products with a lower toxicological impact.
2. Increase of organic farming. Although still a niche market, the amount of area dedicated to organic farming is increasing constantly and therefore, the use of biopesticides, repellants and natural extracts is increasing.
3. The farming area dedicated for export crops is increasing, and the use of the agrochemicals will depend on the restrictions of the final destination country of the crops.
FCI: Can you talk about any changes in regulatory or registration happening or that you would like to see happen in Mexico?
Since last year, the Mexican agrochemical regulatory authorities (COFEPRIS) organized meetings with the industry associations to jointly develop the new registration guidelines. According to the Mexican process for these issues, a draft document was available for public comments in May 2012. It is expected that next month [August] we can have a new document that will be effective by the end of the year.
It is expected that the new registration procedures can improve the actual situation and have a significant impact on the following issues:
1. Clarifying the criteria that have caused interpretation problems, especially in the equivalence registration.
2. More product registrations.
3. Decrease the regulatory barriers for off-patent products.
FCI: What are the biggest challenges and opportunities for the crop protection sector in Mexico?
Challenges:
1. Convenient registration guidelines that can help generic companies to renew their product portfolios.
2. The financial situation of agriculture, caused by the global economic crisis, has forced suppliers to finance crop inputs.
3. Weather changes. For the last two years, weather disasters have increased and had a dramatic impact in the agricultural sector. Floods in the south of the country and severe droughts in the north have occurred, as well as frosts in seasons that were not supposed to happen.
4. Water shortage. Some of the areas of the country depend on underground water for crop irrigation, and the water levels are decreasing and will result in different crop patterns.
Opportunities:
1. Because of its location, Mexico has different weather conditions and therefore, the variety of crops that can be produced are immense, and so are the opportunities.
2. Because of the amount of sun hours, the amount of crops developed in greenhouses has increased significantly and represents a good alternative for some of the crops.
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