This story, from late last week, is a little on the late side, but it didn’t come to my attention until just three days ago. That said, I believe it more than warrants a blog post, for the following reasons: a) it has received, as far as I can tell, no coverage at all in the English language press; b) it qualifies as an inspirational good news story, of which there are so precious few these days; and c) the corn war between Mexico and the US continues to escalate. Whatever the outcome, it will probably end up having regional, if not global, repercussions.
“Not only did they hold the line on GM corn planting during five years of hostility from their own government, they also helped open the door to a new government that takes native corn and its protection seriously.”
On World Food Day (Oct 16) this year, the Salt Lake City-based environmental organisation, Pax Natura Foundation, presented its annual Pax Natura award to Demanda Colectiva, a Mexican collective of 53 people from 22 organizations who have spent the past ten years resisting attempts by GMO giants like Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, to impose GMO corn on Mexico. So far, that resistance has been a remarkable success: ten years after the collective’s initial class-action suit to block field trials of GM corn, the precautionary injunction issued by Judge Jaime Eduardo Verdugo remains in force despite more than 130 company appeals.
Crucially, as an op-ed in the Mexican daily La Jornada notes, Demanda Collectiva’s lawsuit does not seek to obtain financial compensation through the legal process, but rather aims to recover the vitality of Mexico’s fields of corn, as well as stop the use of glyphosate and genetically modified organisms. Mexico’s wildly diverse corn varieties are, the op-ed argues, common and ancestral forms of property that have sustained and enriched the Mexican people’s gastronomic, social and cultural life for millennia.
Demanda Collectiva is certainly worthy of recognition, writes Timothy A Wise, a senior advisor at the US-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, in his latest article for Food Tank:
Not only did they hold the line on GM corn planting during five years of hostility from their own government, they also helped open the door to a new government that takes native corn and its protection seriously.
Demanda Colectiva was picked for this year’s Pax Natura award for its “courage and wisdom to resist the ravages of industrial agriculture that degrades the land, destroys biodiversity and encourages increased carbon emissions,” says Pax Natura Foundation’s president and founder Randall Tolpinrud. Previous recipients of the award have included the English primatologist, anthropologist and environmental campaigner Jane Goodall and former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias.
Speaking at the award ceremony, Goodall said “more people need to know about” the Mexican collective’s “courageous fight.” This is particularly true given the rising tensions between the US and Mexico over the future of corn.
Escalating Food Fight
In late August, Washington escalated its food fight with Mexico by calling for the formation of a dispute settlement panel under the USMCA North American trade deal. This was in response to Mexico’s AMLO government’s decision in February to ban GMO corn for human consumption as well as prohibit use of the “probably” carcinogenic weedkiller glyphosate — the herbicide that commonly accompanies many GMO crops. The names of the three panelists who will determine whether or not Mexico’s democratically elected government can actually do this without facing serious financial penalties were announced last week.
It is easy to see why Washington is concerned. More than 92% of the corn grown in the States is GMO. Roughly a quarter of all the corn exported by the US goes to Mexico, where it is predominantly used for animal feed. As such, Mexico’s ban will hurt some US farmers, but the impact is likely to be muted. But 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.”
Canada was quick to join the fray by supporting the US government’s charges against Mexico’s AMLO government, despite the fact it does not export corn, GM or otherwise, to Mexico. As in the US, the Canadian government is firmly in the pockets of the global biotech industry, as a recent exposé by Radio Canada revealed (translation from the French mine as well as the remarks in parenthesis).
Hand in hand with federal officials, the agrochemical lobby CropLife, which represents companies like Bayer, co-piloted regulatory changes, documents obtained by Radio-Canada reveal. Their collaboration even had a name: “Tiger Team”.
In addition to developing reforms [to, among other things, end the regulatory obligation on the industry to publicly declare certain genetically modified plants] behind closed doors, they defined concepts together and jointly developed communication strategies. All this was done months before a public consultation was held on the [proposed reforms]. The conclusion of the consultation was exactly what the industry wanted.
The Council of Canadians, a non-profit organization that advocates for clean water, fair trade, green energy, public health care, and democracy, published a report last week lashing the Trudeau government for its subservience to corporate biotech interests, including in the escalating food fight between the US and Mexico:
This new regulatory decision that allows the sale of unknown, unregulated GMOs amounts to a biotech corporate take-over of the Canadian food system where companies will control all of the science and information about new GMOs. But the biotechnology industry also wants to… force its products onto the market in other countries – and the Canadian government is in fighting form on the side of these corporate interests.
“No Hay País Sin Maíz” (No Country Without Corn)
Unlike the US and Canada, Mexico now has a government that prizes the preservation of its native corn varieties above the interests of the biotech industry. In 2021, the Supreme Court banned genetically modified corn seeds. In doing so, writes Ernesto Hernández López, an international lawyer, it “constitutionally enshrined the argument that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) permanently damage biodiversity, that genetic diversity within crops is indispensable for responding to climate change, pests, and disease, and that corn’s diversity in particular is vital to food security for Mexico and the globe alike.”
Corn is the cornerstone not only of Mexico’s cuisine and diet, providing 45% of the average calorie intake and 38% of protein consumption, but also its culture. The crop has had a prominent role in the stories, myths and legends of Mexico’s indigenous communities, including the Mayan text Popul Vuh, and is even represented in Aztec gods like Cintéotl, who rose from under the ground to protect maize, notes Hernández López.
It is a legacy that most Mexicans are willing to defend…
Read the full article on Naked Capitalism
Nick Corbishley 