November 11, 2003

 

 

Mexican Corn Farmers Suffer Due To Huge US Corn Imports

Millions of Mexicans, not just Maya villagers, cannot imagine a world without corn farming. Yet, in a profound change for Mexico, millions are discovering they can no longer even eke out a living growing corn because of the market changes wrought by the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

Corn cultivation was born in Mexico, from 8,000 to as many as 10,000 years ago, and the country's pre-Hispanic civilizations revolved about the need to please gods to ensure its growth.
 

Since NAFTA began, barriers on U.S. corn imports have been lowered and U.S. corn imports have soared by about 400%, fulfilling 30% of Mexico's local needs.

Mexico's farmers, even those who are bigger, can't match the might of U.S. corn production, with yields as much as four times greater per acre, and billions in annual subsidies that help produce vast, cheap surpluses.

Farmers' groups blame the imports for depressing prices in Mexico. But they also blame their rising costs and the decline of government guarantees for driving down the price they earn for their crop by as much as 70% since NAFTA began.

Almost half of Mexico's 3 million corn-growing families, about 15 million people, were poor even before NAFTA, farming with little more than wooden plows, a few acres and prayers that rain would fall abundantly.

In the early 1990s, Mexico's government began to implement free-market economic reforms, NAFTA among them, designed to rationalize farm production and decrease government expenditures on inefficient farmers. Price floors for corn were abolished, along with a federal program that guaranteed purchases of the grain.

Subsidies became individual, and concentrated among big growers.

With 60% of Mexico's farmland devoted to corn when NAFTA was signed, the agreement included a 15-year transition period before tariffs on imported corn were to fall to zero, in 2008.

Before NAFTA was signed in 1993, an assistant agriculture sectary, Jose Luis Solis, admitted the agreement "would have a significant effect of massive unemployment in the Mexican countryside," especially among poor corn farmers.

Yet Mexico truncated the transition under NAFTA by immediately importing more US corn tariff-free than NAFTA required. Most of it is destined for animal feed, but it also supplements tortilla meal.

The country's leaders reasoned that Mexico would benefit from cheap corn imports because 75% of the population is now urban.

Still, consumers complain about tortilla prices. Because wholesale production of corn meal is controlled by a few monopolies, tortilla prices rose 500% during the first five years of NAFTA, according to Mexican economist Alejandro Nadal.

Mexican farmers fear that U.S. corn could dominate in Mexico by 2008.

Farmers here are aghast that U.S. corn producers received more than $9 billion in production subsidies in 2000, and more than $6 billion in 2001. Mexico's entire emergency 2003 farm bill, which includes big increases, is about $2.1 billion.

Two multinational corporations, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, control 70% of US corn exports worldwide. And international aid groups, like Oxfam, charge that the corn the companies are exporting to Mexico is destroying the livelihoods of Mexican farmers.

In the highlands of rural Mexico state north of Mexico City, Ismael Fidel Plata, who farms about 8 hectares to 19 acres, isn't sentimental about corn and would gladly switch to another crop.

Plata made only a $100 profit from each hectare of corn he harvested last year.

"We're willing to make a change, but we need help," Plata said, as his lush green corn swayed in the wind nearby. Laden with cobs, the tall plants belied how unprofitable they are.

Farmer Rosendo Alvino Correa said two of his nephews recently left for the United States because of low corn prices. "When our leaders made these changes," he said, "not even in their dreams did they know what it was like to be a farmer."

In Xohuayan, Jose Mariano Chan said villagers only grow corn now for their families, or to sell to pay for transportation costs for taking fruits and vegetables to market.

"We're willing to make a change, but we need help," Plata said.

Farmers also blame the corn crisis for a surge in migration from states where migration was previously limited, such as Yucatan. In the Yucatan village of Xohuayan, men only recently began to migrate.