http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/07/31/MNGIVK8BHP1.DTLMexico's corn farmers see their livelihoods wither away07-31) 04:00 PDT Atlacomulco, Mexico -- Tending his sun-drenched half-acre cornfield, Jose Davila represents a part of Mexico that may fade away as the pressures of free trade intensify.
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The growing dilemma that Mexico's 2 million corn farmers face as the tariffs that protect them shrink under the North American Free Trade Agreement was an issue in this month's presidential election. And as the United States wrestles with already high levels of illegal immigration, some experts say the demise of Mexico's peasantry deserves serious U.S. attention.
"The Bush administration has sought to control immigration at the border, but that's virtually impossible," said Harley Shaiken, director of UC Berkeley's Center for Latin American Studies. "The beginnings of immigration are in the displacement of farmers in Mexico."
An estimated 1.5 million agricultural jobs have been lost since NAFTA went into effect in 1994.
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Mexico Pays Heavy Price for Imported Cornhttp://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4108 Mexico’s food production and distribution system faces a mounting crisis, as the official statement released after recent talks between Presidents George Bush and Felipe Calderón obliquely acknowledged. During their meeting, the leaders agreed to form a binational working group on the subject but rejected the option of revising the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Instead, they called for a “smoother transition” for small-scale farmers, who comprise as much as one-fifth of the Mexican population. “Yes, no, maybe so,” in other words. Rural poverty has to be addressed and, politically speaking, it must be linked to immigration reform, which is a pressing issue both within U.S. and between Mexico and its northern neighbor.
Corn is at the heart of Mexico’s food crisis. Tortillas are crucial for calories and even protein in the traditional Mexican diet. Therefore, it was serious when the price of corn skyrocketed earlier this year, due in part to increased U.S. demand for ethanol.
The price of tortillas shot up by between 40% and 100% in a single week.(
see note) According to Víctor Quintana, a former lawmaker and leader of the Frente Democrático Campesino a peasant organization in the Mexican northern state of Chihuahua, the fallout will continue in the form of higher, prices of other basic foods like eggs, milk and meat.
Tortilla ProtestsCorn, the classic Mexican staple, is imbued with symbolic significance. In Indigenous religious traditions, it is quite literally the equivalent of God-given manna. Today, Mexicans depend on tortillas made from ground corn as they did before the Spanish Conquest. Wheat in the form of bread may have made heavy inroads into the diet of Mexico’s urban middle class. But at the very least half of Mexico’s 100 million not just eats tortillas, but relies on corn, together with beans, for up to half of their protein intake. This is particularly true with children. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a drastic increase in the price of tortillas. It has already provoked massive protest marches, and not surprisingly, of a fervor akin to bread riots.
“Let them eat cake” were the infamous words from the mouth of a French queen who later lost her head. Calderón, who only recently assumed the presidency, amid popular dissent over the legitimacy of his electoral win, when the corn crisis broke. He was slow to act, never committed to defending the regulated price of the staple, and eventually resorted to jawbone-style negotiating with wholesalers and tortilla-sellers, urging them not to gouge. The gentleman’s agreement that resulted capped the tortilla prices at 8.5 pesos per kilogram and was only signed by some 5,000 out of Mexico’s more than 100,000 tortilla sellers. Calderón´s head is still attached to his body but the political furor is far from past. Indeed, in mid-February milk and meat prices began to spike, because Mexican cows are fed corn.
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note: US yellow corn prices rose by 27% from 2005 to 2006 (average $2.01/bu in 2005 and $2.56/bu in 2006) and were far below average US yellow corn prices in 1996 ($3.97/bu). A one week *100%* spike in Mexican tortilla prices can't be attributed to the modest rise in US corn prices between 2005 and 2006.
The politics and economics of Latin American maize is more complex than most people realize...and has little to to with US ethanol production.
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