Maíz y política alimentaria | Hunger games and the struggle against transgenic maize in Mexico
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| The corn not from this country. Source: pueblosbarrancassantiago |
Moderator’s Note: We continue
with our focus on the struggle to protect the native corn of Mexico which is
threatened by the politics and economics of companies like Monsanto that wish
to gain control of one of Mexico’s most important contributions to the food and
foodways of the world. Today’s post is borrowed from the eww blog, an
active and fascinating site that analyzes struggles through the lens of the
Zapatista movement for autonomy. Alfredo Acedo, the Director of Social
Communication and adviser to the National
Union of Regional Organizations of Autonomous Small Farmers of Mexico, an
organizer with La Via Campesina, and
a contributor to the Americas Program,
prepared this article; it was originally posted in October 2012 but has not
enjoyed very wide circulation in the USA.
Acedo argues
that the battle over corn is really about the plundering of native lands and
their biological and cultural diversity. In a word, this is about the new forms
of imperialism – a type of bio-colonialism that seeks to control all life by
controlling seeds, crops, and entire food systems. Acedo further notes that as
a result of neoliberal policies countries like Mexico have lost their once
heralded food self-sufficiency. It is horribly tragic that the country that
gave the world corn is now the world’s largest importer of this staple crop at
the heart of Mexican cuisine and culture. The loss of Mexican food
self-sufficiency has also meant that hunger is becoming more widespread across
a nation that has a heritage of diverse cuisine and foodways.
Neoliberalism
is responsible for this hunger, which mostly affects indigenous people:
The current
famine has brought hundreds of indigenous people to the hospital with acute
malnutrition, the diseases derived from which have killed many of them. This is
the most extreme manifestation of the consequences of the application of the
free market economic model on rural areas.
However,
hunger and oppression may be deeply rooted in the destruction by external and
internal enemies of a once thriving rural economy, but so too is resistance and
organizing by indigenous peoples and their allies in the popular movements
across Mexico. These social movements are effectively challenging the hegemonic
control soght by Monsanto, Dupont, Bayer-Crop Science, and others seeking to
devastate the center of origin of maize, as we reported this past October when
the movement scored a major victory in the court system and won a ban on the
further planting of GMO corn in Mexico.
Like other
revolutionary land-based movements, smallholder farmers and farm workers are
leading this campaign: Acedo observes:
Rural farm workers know that the best
defense of native corn is to plant it and care for the seeds by selecting them
and interchanging them. They know that food sovereignty starts from below and
that social and communal production of their own food is the best way to
guarantee their right to eat.
It seems appropriate then that it is in Mexico,
the birthplace of corn and so many other foods, that the struggle for a human
right to food is being waged most successfully.
NOTE: All images and graphics are the responsibility of the site moderator.
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| Corn in Mexico's past. Source: sciencemeetsfood |
Transgenic corn
THE
STRUGGLE FOR THE FUTURE OF MEXICO’S NATIVE CROPS
Alfredo
Acedo | National Union of Regional Organizations of Autonomous Small Farmers of
Mexico
In an era of
food crisis, the fight for corn has intensified, and the importance of this
grain – a staple of the diet of Mexico and a large part of the world – has been
revealed to the fullest extent. The scenario we are faced with is a battle
between a culture that revolves around the material and symbolic production of
corn, as well as the cultural, social, and historical value placed upon this
crop by humankind, and the network of commercial and political interests that
sees this prodigious crop simply as another way to increase power and profit by
means of plundering its native lands.
Corn is under
imperialistic attack in its place of origin, primarily at the hands of the
North American Free Trade Agreement, which has increased Mexico’s food
dependency. A popular resistance stands in opposition to this assault, playing
its role in a geostrategic struggle exacerbated by climatic imbalances caused
by global warming, as well as the corruption of the agroindustrial production
model.
Why does corn
attract transnational companies? Because it is the most efficient producer of
biomass of any grain. One can get an idea of its efficiency of the corn plant
is compared with that of wheat. One grain of wheat will produce one slender
spike while one grain of corn will produce two robust ears. The yield per
hectare of corn can be double that of wheat. Annual corn production worldwide
is more than 850 million tons.
In contrast to
the other cereals, there are different varieties of corn for almost any
climate, from valleys to mountains, and for almost any type of soil. Its cycle
is short, and rural families have created simple methods for storing it,
preserving it, and preparing it.
Nobel Prize
winner Octavio Paz acutely observed that the invention of corn by the Mexicans
is only comparable to the invention of fire by the early humans. From the
inedible grass of the teocintle or
teosinte, ancient Mexicans created modern corn, which was spread across
Mesoamerica and eventually around the world. The 60 or so breeds and the
thousands of different varieties native to Mexico act as a genetic reservoir
and a crucially important strategic good in terms of the global food supply and
economy, the worth of which can be expressed on a scale of billions of dollars
each year. Corn has become the livelihood of families in rural communities as
well as an accessible food source for poor urban families (corn makes up 60
percent of Mexicans’ caloric intake). It is also a fundamental raw material for
livestock and the global food industry due to its versatility and large number
of by-products and applications.
Corn is both a
product and a means of support in the history and popular culture of Mexico.
Both the history of the grain and the history of the people are intertwined to
such an extent that correlations between price curves for corn and the
vicissitudes of Mexican politics and economy have been documented from the 18th to
the early 19th century. The rise of corn prices, for example,
resulted in poverty, food shortages, famine, epidemics, emigration,
unemployment, crime, and begging. This turmoil generated the social tension
that led to the outbreak of the War for Independence.[i]
Today, corn is
Mexico’s most important crop. It makes up a little more than half of the area
sown and represents 30 percent of the total production value. Mexico is the
fifth largest corn producer in the world, yielding around 21 million tons per
year. However, Mexico imports almost 10 million tons annually – a third of what
it consumes. The other primary producers of corn in order of importance are the
United States, China, Brazil, and Argentina.
Because of its
unique qualities, corn quickly became a coveted good and was introduced to the
market with a clear tendency toward privatization. The crop’s transformation
from a communal resource to an economic good has been made possible by means of
a global strategy with three blocks meant to shut off the route to rural
self-sufficiency through local food production.
The first
block is the imposition of technology meant to appropriate the characteristics
of the corn seeds, as well as the traditional knowledge associated with them.
The second block is the establishment of a legal framework that legalizes
dispossession through registers, certificates, and patents. The third block:
agro-food policies that favor transnational companies and harm small and
mid-sized producers. According to investigators Adelita San Vicente and Areli
Carreón, “This is clear when we look at the earnings and the concentration of
seed companies worldwide. 20 years ago there were thousands of companies that
sold seeds, the majority of which were small family-owned businesses. After
decades of mergers and acquisitions, today only a handful of companies manage
commercial seed, especially regarding the corn and soy industry sectors. In the
case of corn, four companies – Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, and Dow – control
more than three quarters of the market, excluding China. These same companies
own the majority of the agro-biotechnological patents.”[ii]
The global
importance of corn explains the interest that transnational companies have in
controlling the crop in its place of origin and making it a private asset.
These companies started out using hybrid varieties of corn associated with the
use of chemical fertilizers and agro-toxins. They have now created transgenic
corn, which puts the diversity of the native varieties at enormous risk. Once
native crops are destroyed by genetic contamination, corn producers could find
themselves defenseless against the climate crisis.
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| Corn-money. Source: world-crisis.net |
Less Corn for More Money
Even now,
while the world suffers through the stampede of food prices (particularly the
price of corn) and the climatic events in the United States, multinationals
like Monsanto are rubbing their hands in anticipation of the profit to be made
from high prices coupled with a high demand for the seeds. Climate changes in
the United States have led to low expectations for the next corn harvest,[iii] which
is already impacting grain prices and reverberating through other foods as
well. The worst drought that the United States has seen in the last half
century – caused by the highest temperatures on record – can be attributed to
the climate crisis. A sixth of the corn harvest of the United States has been
destroyed, prompting hyperinflation of food prices just as the financial and
global energy crises have escalated.
The rise in
corn prices[iv] and
its repercussions on other food stirred memories of the 2008 crisis which
caused revolts in numerous countries and gave rise to the tortilla crisis in
Mexico. The UN acted immediately to prevent a global food crisis.[v] It
urged governments to take “swift and coordinated action” in order to prevent
rising food prices from creating a disaster that would have harmed millions of
people by the end of that year.
Aside from
corn, two other basic grains in the world food supply – wheat and soy – are
rising in the inflation spiral. UN agencies assert that elevated prices of food
are the symptom and not the disease, and argue that the root causes of the
price crisis must be addressed. It is not exactly clear what this means, but
from the rural perspective it would mean trading the agro-industrial production
model for another based on food sovereignty, oriented toward the local markets
at a time of growing demand for food and climate crisis.
The ongoing
measures taken by many governments, however, do not point in this direction.
According to data made public in the newspaper La Jornada from the Working
Group on Foreign Trade Statistics, Mexico showed record-breaking corn imports[vi] during
the first semester of 2012 in comparison to the same period of the previous
year, when national corn production fell due to frosts and droughts. Imports
were also at a record high with respect to the first half of 2007, when the tortilla
crisis struck, and even compared to imports occurring during both the 2008 and
2009 lapses of the global financial crisis. According to the same source, in
the first six months of 2012 1,931,000,000 dollars were spent on corn imports.
Mexico went
from importing 396,000 tons of corn in 1992, before the signing of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), to 9.8 million tons during the 2011-2012
cycle.[vii] The
measures put in place by NAFTA dismantled the institutions supporting agro-food
production and generated conditions of even greater inequality among the member
countries. Food dependency now represents almost 50 percent of what is consumed
in Mexico, and the government recognizes the existence of 28 million people who
are starving[viii] –
20 million of whom live in the countryside.
The Hunger that Came from the North
“Hunger,
hunger! Bark the dogs of Urique”, exclaimed the elderly people, repeating a
fable from the Porfirian era. During that time, the region of the Tarahumara
inhabited by the Rarámuri was held prisoner by famine and was the scene of
precursory uprisings to the Revolution. Time has come full circle, and now that
region of Chihuahua, in the north of Mexico, is suffering a humanitarian
catastrophe due to a shortage of food that has been compared by the magazine Proceso to what is occurring in
many African countries.[ix]
The current
famine has brought hundreds of indigenous people to the hospital with acute
malnutrition, the diseases derived from which have killed many of them. This is
the most extreme manifestation of the consequences of the application of the
free market economic model on rural areas. This model has dismantled
institutions of credit, consumable goods, insurance, wholesale, and programs
supporting rural production, creating a food shortage that is aggravated by
climate change.
Last year, an
atypical drought that lasted for more than 18 months devastated corn and bean
harvests in the region, and temperatures near -20 degrees Celsius only made the
problem worse. 20 thousand tons of corn for self-consumption was lost. Of the
150 thousand tons of cereal that is produced commercially in Chihuahua, only
500 tons remained. Of the over 100 thousand tons of beans that are harvested
each year, there were barely 20 thousand. The production of oats decreased by
80 percent. The lack of food affected a quarter of a million inhabitants of
4,478 rural and indigenous communities. But the problem did not stop there.
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| Muerto de hambre. Source: lamoradadelospensamientosvivos |
For the
current spring-summer cycle, an insufficient harvest is anticipated. The
Rarámuri, therefore, only planted 4 thousand of the 40 thousand hectares
normally reserved for the production of basic grains, principally corn.[x] Those
who dared to plant did so with native seeds without ample humidity in some
areas of Guachochi, Urique, and Batopilas.
Yet this is
merely a warning of what is to come. The state of food emergency is not
exclusive to the indigenous zones in the north of the country. It is spread
throughout practically the entire rural area, as is shown by the food poverty
figures mentioned above. The agricultural policies that have been imposed upon
Mexican society for more than a quarter century have primarily benefited the
transnational companies and a minority of large producers, at the expense of
the majority of the population. The senselessness of the model that dismantled
the mechanisms and institutions responsible for regulating the domestic market,
only to present it on a silver platter to the transnational companies,
highlights an absurd situation: while hunger is pervasive and the United States
has announced a decrease in its corn harvests, Mexico is faced with the problem
of marketing more than 1,200,000 tons of grain in Sinaloa and Jalisco due to
the fact that the distributors have refused to pay the international price,
breaking NAFTA rules that do not work in their favor. The transnational
companies not only control marketing, but also most of the branches of
agro-industry, including the production, storage, and distribution of the
seeds.
The Transgenic Corn Front
Monsanto and
the companies that control the global transgenic seed market have made Mexican
corn their preferred target because once they have conquered it, the
transnationals could become the sole owners of this treasure worldwide.
Even before
the Mexican government broke the moratorium on experimentation with transgenic
corn in 2009, the corn had already been genetically contaminated in its place
of origin. The study that presented this evidence was done by scientist Ignacio
Chapela and published in the November 2001 issue of Nature. Chapela documented the presence of transgenic corn in
Oaxaca, an area with one of the largest diversities of the grain. This fact was
confirmed months later by Mexican researchers. Currently, almost half of the
states in the country have reported the presence of transgenic contamination,
and there is a widespread conviction that the contamination was caused
intentionally. Whatever the case may be, it is a historic crime.
Transgenic
corn does not increase yields,[xi] does
not provide any consumer advantages, and does not carry any benefit for
producers regarding input costs. However, if the commercial sowing of Monsanto
corn is approved, the company could make a profit of close to 400 million
dollars per year, according to Victor Suarez, president of the National
Association of Commercial Field-Producer Companies.[xii]
This is why
lobbyists for the United States-based company spare no efforts when it comes to
investing some 5 million dollars per year in order to influence politicians,
journalists, scientists, and community leaders. The company is also investing
in its beachheads in the Center for Research and Advanced Studies at Irapuato
and the Master Project of Mexican Corn, which is supported in part by the
National Farm Worker Confederation.[xiii]
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| Art by Carlos Barbarena. Source: chacatorex |
The
clandestine contamination – a vehicle of destruction of the Mexican rural
economy – is a direct consequence of NAFTA. Unlabeled corn that continues to
flow into the country from the United States is largely transgenic, and is
introduced with the knowledge and consent of companies and officials without
the least concern. These same entities and people confront public opinion, as
well as those who reject the cultivation of transgenic corn, using a fait
accompli strategy.
Mexican
legislators approved the Monsanto Law (the Law on Biosafety and Genetically
Modified Organisms) in 2004. As its nickname suggests, the law primarily favors
transnational interests. This law opened the door for the cultivation of
transgenic materials while failing to guarantee biosafety or protect native
Mexican plants and their producers.
In the same
vein, the Federal Seed Production, Certification, and Trade Law was approved in
2007, while the Federal Law on Plant Varieties has been in existence since
1996.[xiv] The
new legal framework was designed for the purpose of plundering, while laws that
protect the rights of producers, farm workers, and indigenous people – no
matter how precariously – are being abolished or reformed.
In 2009 the
federal government, betraying rural society yet again, broke the moratorium de
facto that had stood for 11 years. The government subsequently began to grant
permits for experimental sowing and transgenic corn pilots, and has brought the
country to within one step of the commercial sowing of Monsanto corn.
The use of
transgenic seeds has been added to agro-industrial production as a means of
augmenting producers’ dependency, but at the same time it has sharpened those
contradictions that indicate the deterioration of this model.[xv] The
proven damages to the ecosystem and human health, the harmful effects on the
climate caused by the use of petroleum in agricultural processes, and the
emergence of super-plagues able to resist the poisons associated with
transgenic seeds have sparked protests, embargoes, and prohibitions. Monsanto
corn MON16 has been expelled from 8 different countries in the European Union,
and around the world there has been a resurgence of organic production.
As has been
shown by the Maize Defense Network, which is composed of more than one thousand
communities and dozens of organizations in 22 Mexican states, “the cultivation
of transgenic materials is an instrument of corporate abuse against the right
to have access to healthy food and against small-scale, independent food
production controlled by rural farm workers in countless corners of the globe
(who provide the largest percentage of the world’s food supply). [The use of
transgenic seeds] is a frontal attack on food sovereignty.”
The People’s Fight for the Corn
The Network,
in line with movements such as “Without Corn there is no Country” and
organizations like the National Union of Autonomous Regional Peasant
Organizations (representative of La Via Campesina in North America), has
organized campaigns to throw Monsanto and its Frankenstein seeds out of the
country. The Maize Defense Network, however, has distinguished itself by
declaring an emphatic moratorium over ten years against the invasion of
transgenic corn. Rural farm workers know that the best defense of native corn
is to plant it and care for the seeds by selecting them and interchanging them.
They know that food sovereignty starts from below and that social and communal
production of their own food is the best way to guarantee their right to eat.
They know or
sense that the corporations and the governments of the dominant countries have
used food as a geostrategic weapon, impeding the agricultural development of
the subordinate countries by means of “free” trade agreements and agricultural
mechanization controlled by companies like Monsanto. This serves the double
purpose of maximizing profits while indefinitely maintaining the subjugation,
in this case, of Mexican agriculture to the agricultural interests of the
United States.
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| Photo by Ivan Martinez Ojeda. Source: fotocommunity |
Before the
commercial opening, corn had been protected by national agricultural policies
and the corn used for human consumption was supplied in sufficient quantities
for local production, particularly in communal or seasonal smallholder farms.
Following the signing of NAFTA, the Mexican government removed support little
by little for the majority of the field producers until it had finally
abandoned them.
In a scenario
that is just as complex as it is unfavorable, the Maize Defense Network and
various other Mexican civil society organizations convinced the Permanent
People’s Tribunal to conduct sessions in Mexico. The prosecution held the
Mexican state responsible for the violence committed against the corn, food
sovereignty, and the rights of the people.
Supported by
the moral standing of the Permanent People’s Tribunal, the rural inhabitants
stand against NAFTA and its signatories because:
a) They have
surrendered food production to transnational companies, making Mexico a
dependent country.
b) The
commercial opening to grains led to the loss of more than 10 million hectares
of cultivated corn and the rural exodus of 15 million people.[xvi]
c) They have endangered
the way of life surrounding corn – the heart of Mesoamerican civilization.
d) They are
responsible for a crime against humanity: the destruction of the genetic
fortitude of one of the four pillars of the world’s diet.
At the same
time, the most conscientious and organized rural farm workers have implemented
resistance strategies, such as the establishment of transgenic-free zones,
democratic unions and councils in defense of corn, networks of organic tianguis, corn festivals, communal
germplasm banks, communal food reserves, seed exchange fairs, and other
measures in defense of the rural lifestyle.
These are the
people who have recreated biodiversity over many generations, and continue to
be responsible for its preservation today. They are the direct heirs of the
cultures that domesticated and developed corn. They are the people of the corn
of the 21st century, and they are convinced that the voracity
of transnational companies must not be allowed to usurp this thousand-year-old
legacy.
Alfredo Acedo is Director of Social Communication and adviser to the
National Union of Regional Organizations of Autonomous Small Farmers of Mexico
and a contributor to the Americas Program http://www.cipamericas.org.
Translation:
Mac Layne
Endnotes
[i] Florescano,
Enrique. Precios del maíz y crisis agrícolas en México, 1708-1810. El Colegio
de México, 1969.
[ii] San Vicente
Tello, Adelita; Carreón, Areli. El robo de las semillas de maíz en su centro de
origen y de diversidad genética. December 16, 2008 http://vecam.org/article1080.html
[iii] In
August, the United States Department of Agriculture showed an 18 percent
decrease in its projections of corn production for this year, or some 56 million
tons. http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdreport.aspx?hidReportRetrievalName=BVS&hidReportRetrievalID=884&hidReportRetrievalTemplateID=1
[iv] Corn prices shot
up to a historic maximum of 8.49 dollars per bushel on August 10th (in
the United States, a bushel is equivalent to 25.4 kilograms).
[v] UN agencies
“stressed the vulnerability to a food problem, given that even in a good year,
global cereal production is barely sufficient to satisfy the increasing demand
for food and fuel.”
[vi] The purchase
exceeded corn imports of the first six months of 2007 by 159 percent, totaling
744,857,000 dollars.
[vii] Mexico is now
the primary importer of corn in the world.
[viii] Between 2008
and 2010, the number of people without access to food rose by 4.2 million,
bringing the total to around 28 million Mexican citizens.
[ix] La Tarahumara:
hambruna al estilo Somalia. http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=294045
[x] The food alert in
the Tarahumara remains in effect due to low harvests. Furthermore, the
government defaulted on its delivery of 100 thousand tons of corn and beans
promised as humanitarian aid. http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2012/08/27/sociedad/045n1soc
[xi] Failure to
Yield. 2009. Report in the Union of
Concerned Scientists that shows zero increase in the yields of
transgenic corn in the United States, after more than 20 years of research and
13 years of commercial sowing. http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/food_and_agriculture/failure-to-yield.pdf
[xii] Monsanto wants
to be the “leader” of Mexican corn. http://www.tudecides.com.mx/noticias/empresas/monsanto-quiere-el-liderazgo-de-maiz-en-mexico.html
[xiii] San Vicente
Tello, Adelita ¿Los niños al cuidado de Herodes? Convenio CNC Monsanto. La
Jornada del Campo. 9 de octubre de 2007 http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2007/10/10/amenaza.htm
[xiv] Una raya más al
tigre de la Ley Monsanto. http://www.cipamericas.org/es/archives/66
[xv] Stedile, João
Pedro. Las tendencias del capital sobre la agricultura. América Latina en movimiento
459. ALAI, October 2010 http://www.alainet.org/images/alai459.pdf
[xvi] Permanent
People’s Tribunal. Mexico. Work document, February 20, 2012
Hearing 5: Violence
against corn, food sovereignty and the rights of the people.
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