[Mexican] President Andrés Manuel López Obrador …. proposed the use of machetes to remove weeds from crops instead of using herbicides such as glyphosate, which is heavily regulated by his government. 

 “The possibility of using it is not being canceled,” the President said, though he asked the National Agricultural Council to invest resources in research to see …. what non-chemical options there are for the sake of the environment.

“And don’t rule something out, because this agrochemical is used to kill herbs. That’s right, isn’t it? It’s a herbicide. Do not discard the machete and the tarpala, and give people work, that is, do it manually. They’re going to say, ‘No, it would cost us so much more.’ You have to analyze all the options, all the possibilities.” 

He pointed out that if a program is developed to replace the herbicide and it creates jobs, his government would support it, because it would be more employment for agricultural laborers.

[su_panel color=”#3A3A3A” border=”1px solid #3A3A3A” radius=”2″ text_align=”left”]Editor’s note: This article was originally published in Spanish and has been translated and edited for clarity.[/su_panel]

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