This may be an important battle for Big Ag lobbies and biotech companies but it is an existential one for Mexico, for whom corn is the cornerstone not only of its cuisine and diet but also its culture.
Following months of failed negotiations, the U.S. government has escalated its food fight with Mexico by calling for the formation of a dispute settlement panel under the USMCA North American trade deal. The cause of the dispute is a decree passed by Mexico’s government that seeks to prohibit the use of genetically modified (GM) yellow corn for human use. Its reasons for doing so include protecting the health of the population, the environment and Mexico’s genetic diversity of maize.
The U.S. Trade Representatives Office, or USTR, argues that Mexico’s restrictions on GM corn imports are not only not based on “science” but “they undermine the market access [Mexico’s government] agreed to provide in the USMCA.”
Mexico is the birthplace of corn as well as the world’s richest repository of corn varieties. But it is also the second largest buyer of US-grown GM yellow corn, which is used almost exclusively for animal feed. This is thanks largely to NAFTA, which eliminated the Mexican government’s protection mechanisms for Mexican farmers while preserving U.S. corn subsidies for US farmers.
The largest buyer, China, is also trying to wean itself off US corn, partly by buying from other major suppliers, such as Brazil and Argentina, but also by expanding its own cultivation of yellow maize. It has its own set of reasons for wanting to do so, including its ever escalating trade war with the US. If Mexico were to do the same, as it is trying to, US corn growers could have serious difficulty finding replacement markets, with big knock-on effects for Big Ag, biotech firms and the four of five US states that depend heavily on the corn industry.
A Long, Legal Battle
This is a battle that has been raging since at least 2002, when transgenic traits were found in native maize varieties in the southeastern state of Oaxaca. As Timothy A Wise, a senior research fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute and a senior advisor at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), recounts in chapter 7 of his book, Eating Tomorrow, “Not only had the transgene migrated on the wind, through maize’s open pollination, it had done so despite a nationwide ban on the planting of transgenic maize.”
Since then the world’s biggest GM seeds company have been trying to get official approval for the experimental and commercial planting of GM crops, including maize, in Mexican soil. In 2005, they finally got what they wanted when the Vicente Fox government lifted a seven-year moratorium on the cultivation of GM crops in Mexico. For the first time ever, GM maize could be planted in the country, but only in areas that were not considered “centres of origin for the crop.”
This stipulation would later become pivotal when new scientific research revealed that more or less all of Mexico, including the fields earmarked for GM crop trials in the northern borderlands, were centres of origin for maize.
Corn is the cornerstone not only of Mexico’s cuisine and diet but also its culture. In 2007, a mass social movement emerged bringing together more than 300 peasant organisations, environmentalists, human rights defenders, small and medium-scale producers, consumers, academics, women’s groups and chefs. They gathered under one unifying slogan: “Sin maíz, no hay país” (without maize, there is no country). Their mission was (and still is) to preserve Mexico’s native maize varieties as well as avert legislation that would apply brutally rigid intellectual copyright laws to the crop seeds they are able to grow.
In 2013, a collective of 53 scientists and 22 civil rights organisations and NGOs brought a suit against the GMO giants. And won. In September of that year, Judge Jaime Eduardo Verdugo issued a precautionary injunction on all further permits of GM crops, citing “the risk of imminent harm to the environment.” Shortly after that, another brave judge, Marroquín Zaleta, suspended the granting of licenses for GMO field trials sought by Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, Pionner-Dupont and Mexico’s SEMARNAT (Environment and Natural Resources Ministry), as I reported for WOLF STREET at the time:
In defending his ruling, Zaleta cited the potential risks to the environment posed by GMO corn. If the biotech industry got its way, he argued, more than 7000 years of indigenous maize cultivation in Mexico would be endangered, with the country’s 60 varieties of corn directly threatened by cross-pollination from transgenic strands. Monsanto’s response was as swift as it was brutal: not only did it – and its lackeys in the Mexican government – appeal Zaleta’s ruling, it also demanded his removal from the bench on the grounds that he had already stated his opinion on the case before sentencing.
However, Monsanto’s bullying tactics failed to impress the judges [of Mexico’s federal appeals court]. On August 15, the court convened to review Zaleta’s alleged bias ruled against the US corporation’s legal suit. Also spurned by the Mexican courts was the world’s third largest GMO seed manufacturer, Syngenta, whose reapplication for a license to run test trials of its maize crops was rejected.
Phasing Out GM Corn Imports
Andrés Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO) is the first Mexican president in a long time to have prioritised Mexico’s food sovereignty. Even on the campaign trail, in 2018, he said:
“We buy over 14 million tonnes of corn. (…) This is a contradiction, an aberration. Corn originally comes from Mexico and it now turns out that Mexico is one of the biggest importers of corn in the world. This cannot go on.”
Once in office he began putting his words into action. In late 2020, he passed a decree to phase out all imports of GM crops, including corn, and the herbicide glyphosate by January 2024. The decree enjoyed the support of many agricultural, environmental, public health and consumer groups.
But it also prompted a concerted push back from Big Ag lobbies and global biotech behemoths, which ultimately prompted a partial retreat from AMLO. In February this year he issued a new decree reiterating plans to block GM corn imports for human consumption but eliminating the deadline for imports intended for livestock feed and industrial use, which encompasses almost all US corn. The government reserved the right to substitute GM corn for animal feed some time in the future.
In other words, the process of weaning Mexico off GM corn would take longer than originally envisaged. One reason for this is that Mexico was struggling to build up its own production of non-GM yellow corn. What this meant is that the new decree would have minimal impact on US farmers, at least for some years to come, as Mexico gradually reduces its imports of . Only four percent of US corn exports are white corn, and most of that does not go into tortillas. Yet even that did not placate the US government…
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Nick Corbishley 