The Shadowy Corporate Interests Behind Mexico's GMO Corn Ban

Corn is a grain, but it is also many other things. It feeds livestock, people and even serves as biofuel. In certain parts of the world, when nippy autumn frost begins to creep in, corn takes on an often hotly disputed plastic-like and saccharine iteration (candy corn). However, in Mexico, corn is much more than something that just feeds and fuels. Unlike its sugary analogue, corn has created a nation and united a people. There is a saying in Mexico; sin maíz, no hay país, which translates to “without corn, there is no country.” It goes without saying that corn is important to Mexico. Nevertheless, its significance has been trumped by profits and bottom lines, demonstrated through US trade policies pertaining to food and agriculture. In Mexico’s case, the grain’s diminishing significance has to do with the market being flooded with cheap American government-subsidised corn due to the former North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and current United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Seeking to reclaim food sovereignty, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, issued a decree in December 2020 calling for the phase-out of glyphosate and genetically engineered (GE) corn by 2024.

The issue with GE corn and glyphosate is multipronged. Mexico is home to nearly 60 native corn landraces, and there is great concern for cross-contamination with GE corn. Moreover, decades of grassroots activism against GE corn has manifested as a result of the adverse impact on small farmers and threats to biodiversity. Such concerns are extremely valid given the results of US corn’s emergence in the Mexican market: rural economies have been devastated, and two million farmworkers have been forced to seek work in urban areas and across the border in the US. Glyphosate—the other target of López Obrador’s decree—is an herbicide that is most likely a human carcinogen. However, corporations such as Monsanto –since acquired by German conglomerate Bayer-- have ghost written studies minimising the herbicide’s adverse health effects. There have also been further efforts to keep glyphosate on the market, evidenced, for instance, by internal government emails by the Office of US Trade Representative which revealed that Bayer and lobby group CropLife America had been working alongside US officials to pressure the Mexican government into dropping its intended ban on the herbicide. Such actions reveal the extent to which the interests of corporations are put over the health of a nation’s people and highlights the need for food sovereignty.

Implementing Obrador’s ban will be challenging seeing that Mexican farmers would have to increase production by around 60% to keep up with demand. However, the Mexican Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Víctor Suárez, has insisted on the need for perseverance. Furthermore, López Obrador’s government has put in place programs to promote the transition away from glyphosate toward agroecological farming practices. Additionally, there are also programs that pay farmers above market prices and subsidies for those working on less than 12 acres of land.

The breadth of US trade policies such as NAFTA and USMCA has effectively eliminated Mexico’s ability to have meaningful control over the way in which its corn is produced, traded and consumed. There is value in free trade but when a country is effectively stripped of its ability to protect its people from carcinogenic corn and its native crops from GE variations, there should indeed be pushback against threats and manipulation from lobby groups, corporations and the American government. López Obrador’s call to ban glyphosate and GE corn is simply the first step to reclaiming food sovereignty and although it is still inchoate, the resistance that has manifested as a result of this signals the fact that all of this appears so radical. But change is gradual yet undeniably necessary.

A recent development in this corn ban occurred recently, in October 2021, the Mexican Secretary Agriculture and Rural Development Victor Villalobos confirmed that Mexico will continue to import GE corn from the US. He stipulated that GE corn will not be raised on Mexican farmland but there will no limitations on the importation of corn from the US. It is likely that this will not be the last development in this corn ban seeing that government officials, activism groups and corporations will continue to advance their goals on such a pivotal issue.

Free trade agreements such as NAFTA and USMCA are beneficial in regard to the way in which they eliminate barriers to free trade and stimulate investment. However, López Obrador’s call to ban GE and glyphosate corn also highlights the nefarious side of such agreements which have the power to strip a nation of its food sovereignty. Everything is tied back to food, without corn there is no country. Without corn, farmers are forced out of their hometowns to seek employment across hostile borders. Profits should never take precedence over the health and wellbeing of a nation. People must not be forgotten.

Image courtesy of Jesse Gardner via Unsplash, © 2019, some rights reserved.