President Vicente Fox on Saturday acknowledged a falling pesos has drastically reduced Mexicans' buying power making it difficult for working class families to cover their basic needs, and that this disproportinately hurts peasant farmers.

During his weekly radio program "Fox With You," the president urged farmers to work in teams so they can better position themselves in a competitive global market, El Universal daily reported. He also said the nation's six million producers need to use the resources they have to modernize the way in which they work or they will never be able to compete with the industrialized agriculture of rich nations.

Joining Fox on the program, Agriculture Secretary Javier Usabiaga said farmers need to organize production chains that help them produce more and that they select qualified and honest people to lead these groups. He affirmed if Mexican farmers continue to work in individual family units instead of efficient networks, poverty in the countryside will increase.

"We don't want to be a government that receives complaints, but one that receives proposals from producers so we can promise, alongside farmers, to establish compromises and accompany them toward the same objective," he said.

Since coming into office, Fox has advocated farmers drastically change their methods of production and has refused to continue subsidies, dolled out by the former-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), for an agriculture system he views as inefficient and outdated.

In response, thousands of farmers have staged periodic protests around the capital and have often demanded Usabiaga's resignation.