The severe rains of the first half of October in northern Veracruz caused significant material losses in the agricultural, livestock, commercial, and business sectors.
According to the National Civil Protection Coordination, 40 municipalities in Veracruz were affected by flooding.
In Poza Rica, Álamo, Tuxpan, Cazones, Papantla, and Gutiérrez Zamora alone, the hardest hit areas, more than 10,000 commercial and business establishments, both formal and informal, suffered varying degrees of damage, according to estimates cited by Edgar Sandoval Pérez, a researcher at El Colegio de Veracruz.
This represents approximately 25% of the 40,000 economic units that operated in these areas before the floods, ranging from small workshops and bakeries to agricultural packing plants and fishing cooperatives.
According to data from the National Statistical Directory of Economic Units (DENUE) of INEGI (the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography), there are 30,778 economic units in these six Veracruz municipalities: Poza Rica, 11,124; Tuxpan, 6,448; Papantla, 5,350; Álamo, 3,743; Gutiérrez Zamora, 2,694; and Cazones, 1,419.
In Álamo, the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism (CANACO Servitur) estimates that approximately 3,500 businesses in the town center were affected.
Iván Garcés Gómez, the organization’s delegate in that municipality, reports that 90% of the businesses suffered damage of varying degrees.
The delicate aspect of the matter is that the economic cycles that sustain thousands of families in the Huasteca Alta, Huasteca Baja, and Totonaca regions of Veracruz state have been disrupted, emphasizes Edgar Sandoval Pérez.
According to the professor at the University of Veracruz, each municipality has a distinct economic focus, and therein lies the complexity, both in terms of the impact and the recovery.
Tuxpan depends largely on port trade and tourism services; Poza Rica, on the energy sector and its supply network; Álamo, on citrus and agro-industrial processing; Cazones, on fishing and coastal tourism; Papantla, on vanilla and rural ecotourism; and Gutiérrez Zamora, on livestock and regional trade.
The first impacts began to be seen in the price increases of some products, mainly citrus fruits, other fruits, and vegetables, the professor notes.
Products like bananas and jalapeño peppers saw price increases of up to 25%.
“The loss of crops due to flooding and soil contamination, exacerbated by the fuel spill in areas of Poza Rica and Cazones, has generated a localized inflationary effect: more expensive food in regions where family incomes have fallen. In practice, this means a double blow for the population: less work and a higher cost of living,” the report states.
The only sectors that remain active are the hotel and food service industries, due to the people who have come to support the affected population.
The state government announced that to support the affected families and businesses, it will implement the “Support by Word” program as part of the economic recovery plan.
The goal is to support entrepreneurs, micro-businesses, and small businesses that lost their tools or merchandise.
“We have the Word of Honor Support program for small and medium-sized businesses; now we will channel the remaining resources, along with those allocated by the Ministry of Finance and Planning, to support those who lost everything. There are cases like in Álamo, where the water flooded all the businesses and families need a boost to start over,” stated Governor Rocío Nahle.
According to the governor, the federal government, through the Ministry of Welfare, will also provide 50,000 pesos per affected business.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Economy will implement a coordinated strategy with business chambers to promote the reactivation of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises.
So far, there are no official estimates of the damage to livestock; however, it is possible to get an idea of the magnitude of the losses in the sector from the loss reports of members of the National Confederation of Livestock Organizations (CNOG).
According to Helio Serrato Pérez, Treasurer According to the organization’s Insurance Funds, consulted by this newspaper, by midweek they had received 620 reports of 6,350 head of cattle lost and 1,200 livestock facilities damaged in Veracruz, Hidalgo, Puebla, Querétaro, and San Luis Potosí.
Specifically in Veracruz, 4,668 head of cattle, primarily, and approximately 900 livestock facilities had been reported lost.
Despite the federal government’s elimination of budget allocations for livestock insurance in 2019, the CNOG (National Confederation of Livestock Producers) continued operating with remaining funds to support its registered producers up to that year.
The process works as follows: the organization is notified (a report is filed), an investigation is conducted to verify that a loss actually occurred, and then financial support is provided for each head of livestock lost. The compensation is approximately 9,000 pesos per animal.
The organization estimates that between 20 million and 27 million pesos in compensation will be awarded across the five states due to losses.
More than 66,000 hectares remained unharvested in the agricultural districts of Álamo and Tuxpan.
Local and federal authorities have not released the number of hectares of crops lost. However, it is possible to get an idea of the number of plots that may have been affected by consulting data from the Agri-Food and Fisheries Information Service of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER), specifically the number of hectares that were pending harvest when the floods occurred and the reports of damage from farmers in the area.
Carlos Castañeda Garcés, president of the Veracruz Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture, estimates that in some cases 90% of the crops in those areas were lost.
In the agricultural districts of Álamo and Tuxpan alone, located in the area most affected by the rains, as of September 30th, that is, one week before the heavy rains and floods, 66,460 hectares of various crops remained to be harvested.
In the Tuxpan agricultural district alone, comprised of the municipalities of Cazones de Herrera, Cerro Azul, Coatzintla, Tamiahua, Castillo de Teayo, Álamo Temapache, Tepetzintla, Tihuatlán, and Tuxpan, of the 41,092 hectares planted with corn for grain, as of September 30th—eight days before the rains began that turned the region into a disaster zone—14,341 hectares remained to be harvested.
In that same area, the harvest was also still pending on 1,097 hectares planted with oranges and 240 hectares planted with grapefruit.
The expected production in this area was 40,355 tons of corn for grain; 1,271,814 tons of oranges; 13,740 tons of bananas; and 11,775 tons of beans.
26,751 hectares of corn had already been harvested. 81,301 hectares planted with oranges; 1,625 hectares with grapefruit; and 1,286 hectares with bananas.
Veracruz is Mexico’s leading orange producer. Throughout the state, 172,511 hectares were planted with this citrus fruit this year, and 164,315 hectares had already been harvested. State production was expected to reach 2,416,606 tons.
In the Pánuco agricultural district, 36,265 hectares of corn for grain, 10,150 hectares of soybeans, and 2,558 hectares of sorghum for grain remained to be harvested. The planted area for each of the other crops does not exceed 700 hectares.
The Pánuco agricultural district comprises the municipalities of Naranjos, Amatlán, Benito Juárez, Citlaltépetl, Chalma, Chiconamel, Chicontepec, Chinampa de Gorostiza, Chontla, Ixcatepec, Ozuluama de Mascareñas, Pánuco, Platón Sánchez, Tamalín, Tampico Alto, Tancoco, Tantima, Tantoyuca, Tempoal, and El Higo.
In addition to the disaster caused by the floods in the area, the region suffered further damage from the hydrocarbon spill that occurred on October 16 from the Pemex pipeline running from Poza Rica to Ciudad Madero, Tamaulipas.
The spill occurred at kilometer 46+935 of the 30-inch pipeline. Pemex reported on October 23 that containment efforts were 100% complete.
To prevent the crude oil from reaching populated areas and to contain its spread along the riverbed, 94 medium and heavy-duty marine containment booms were deployed from the spill’s source.
These actions extended along 35 kilometers of the Tuxpan River; additionally, 467 oil-absorbing booms were installed along the eight kilometers connecting to the Pantepec River, up to the first bridge in downtown Tuxpan.
By that day, more than one million liters of hydrocarbons had been recovered at seven strategic points.
The intake structure of the Veracruz State Water Commission in the town of El Xúchitl, a critical point for the water supply to the municipality of Tuxpan, located four kilometers downstream from the spill site, was also recovered.
In this regard, Luis Montero Irigoyen, spokesperson for Canacintra Gulf of Veracruz region, points out that approximately 180,000 liters of hydrocarbons were spilled into the Pantepec River, which is the main tributary in the northern part of the state.
In addition, an unquantified number of orchards and cultivated areas were affected.
Although the river is approximately 130 kilometers long, the ecological damage occurred in a stretch of between 10 and 20 kilometers.
Just one liter of hydrocarbon can contaminate one cubic meter of water; it is estimated that nearly 1 billion liters of water were affected.
The Pantepec River supplies drinking water to several communities and is used for the agricultural sector. The number of contaminated bodies of water is unknown.
According to Edgar Sandoval Pérez, a researcher at El Colegio de Veracruz, the state’s economic recovery after this disaster requires coordinating reliable censuses, based on field evidence, to prioritize aid not only by the number of victims but also by the impact on production.
In his opinion, the recovery must begin with a territorial approach: first restoring activities that generate employment, cash flow, and local supply chains.
In 2024, losses from disasters caused by rain and flooding were estimated at 2.82 billion pesos, primarily due to Hurricane Nadine; losses in 2023 totaled 988 million pesos, and those in 2022 reached 2.599 billion pesos.
Sandoval Pérez recalls that after Hurricane Grace in 2021, direct incentives to citrus producers in northern Veracruz helped them recover 60% of their production within a year.
This lesson should be revisited now, but with a more comprehensive approach. It is essential to incorporate soft microloans, temporary exemptions from state and municipal fees, and inter-institutional coordination between state and federal governments and local business chambers to channel support without duplication or fragmentation.
It is also time to rethink productive infrastructure. The industrial parks and logistics zones of Poza Rica and Tuxpan could become reactivation hubs through tax incentives and temporary employment programs.
According to the academic, the rural sector urgently needs a soil restoration and cleanup strategy for contaminated canals, funded with federal resources and technical support from the National Institute of Ecology.
In his opinion, the cost of reconstruction could range between 6.5 and 14 billion pesos.
Source: eleconomista
