“We believe that Mexico has every right to ask for what it wants,” Lynn Clarkson, chief executive of Illinois-based Clarkson Grain company, told Mexican newspaper La Jornada. “As a supplier, the United States should give its customers what they want.”
What Mexico, one of the US’ biggest buyers of corn, wants is to grow its own non-GM corn and import only non-GM corn to meet domestic demand. But this poses a direct threat to the profits and power of the world’s biggest seeds and chemicals manufacturers. If Mexico were to ban GMO imports, it would also send a message to other countries in Latin America, one of the biggest markets for GMO crops, that there are alternatives available. And those alternatives do not offer the same juicy proprietary perks as GMO seeds.
This is why the US has launched a trade dispute against Mexico for seeking to phase out the importation and use of genetically modified corn and glyphosate, a probable carcinogen, on health, environmental and food self-sufficiency grounds. But as the article in La Jornada notes, not all farmers in the US oppose the Mexican government’s stance.
Clarkson Grain is a small company compared to many of its US counterparts, but in its sector it is a pioneer in the production and sale of organic and non-GMO corn and soybeans.
The Clarkson executive is an expert in non-GMO agriculture and has previously served on advisory panels for the US Department of Agriculture and the US Office of Commerce.
She says it is extremely strange for a nation that claims to be capitalist to be denying the customer what it wants.
Bill Freese, science policy adviser at the Washington DC-based non-profit Center for Food Safety, puts it in even starker terms:
It is scandalous that the United States is trying to force Mexico to accept transgenic corn with glyphosate residue, Freese said in an interview with La Jornada .
“We think that the United States should stop bullying Mexico to import this type of corn. Mexico is a sovereign country that must decide what to import or not.”
Freese believes that Mexico is doing the world a favor by raising concerns about GM corn. It is clear that glyphosate is a known carcinogen, he says.
Mexico is one of the biggest buyers of U.S. corn, consuming around 17 million tonnes of mostly GM yellow corn annually, the majority of which is used for animal feed. But on December 31, 2020 Mexico’s President Andrés Manual Lopéz Obrador (aka AMLO) published a decree calling for all imports of GMO crops, including corn, to be phased out by the end of January 2024. The same went for glyphosate.
AMLO argued that the decree was necessary to bolster Mexico’s ability to feed itself as well as protect the health of the population, the environment and Mexico’s genetic diversity of Mexican maize. But the ban would also hurt US farmers, global Big Ag companies and biotech behemoths would also be significant. 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.
“Most farmers, my generation and younger, have never even used conventional corn. We’re not set up to do it. We don’t have the equipment to do it,” Hinkel Farms’ Elizabeth Hinkel told FOX Business’ Madison Alworth on “Mornings with Maria“. “So it would be a huge investment if we had to go back to growing conventional. And on top of that, our yields would be decreased.”
As I reported in my Feb 2 piece, “Is the Unstoppable Force of Mexico’s GMO Ban About to Meet the Unmovable Object of US Big Ag Lobbies?“, Mexico and the US Department of Argriculture were heading for a head-on collision.
At some point, something has to give, one side must blink. One can only hope, for the sake of Mexico and the world at large, it isn’t AMLO.
A lot has happened since then. Amid ratcheting pressure from the US side, AMLO’s government did eventually crack, albeit only partially. On February 13, it issued a new presidential decree that rowed back certain key elements of the original decree banning the importation of GMO products (including corn) and the use of glyphosate.
Crucially, the new decree allows for the continued importation of genetically modified yellow corn as long as it is used as animal feed or in industrial use for human food — but only until an appropriate substitute is obtained in sufficient enough quantity. The decree also revoked authorizations and permits to import, produce, distribute and use the herbicide glyphosate and genetically modified (GM) corn for non-industrial human consumption.
Given that almost all Mexican imports of GMO yellow corn are used in animal feed or industrial food processes, the decree represented a significant concession. As El País reported at the time, the AMLO government had “relaxed its ruling on the prohibition of GMO corn in the country,” given that the new ban will exclusively affect the use of GMO corn in human consumption (i.e, in dough and tortillas). Also, “it eliminates the deadline to end the use of transgenic seed for animal fodder and industry, which had been set for January 2025.”
In other words, it gives US farmers plenty of additional time to rethink their business model. Yet even that was not enough to appease Mexico’s USMCA partners, the US and Canadian governments. It seems that nothing short of total capitulation to the biotech industry will do. On March 15, U.S. Trade Representative Katherina Tai confirmed that Washington is seeking consultation with Mexican authorities on the country’s plans to ban genetically engineered corn from human consumption.
“The United States has repeatedly conveyed our serious concerns with Mexico’s biotechnology policies and the importance of adopting a science-based approach that complies with its USMCA commitments,” Tai said in a news release. “Mexico’s policies threaten to disrupt billions of dollars in agricultural trade and they will stifle the innovation that is necessary to tackle the climate crisis and food security challenges if left unaddressed. We hope these consultations will be productive as we continue to work with Mexico to address these issues.”
AMLO’s response so far has been to stand his ground, or at least what little ground he has left. On March 7, he insisted that prohibiting the human consumption of transgenic corn does not violate the USMCA. According to Sharon Anglin, a senior lawyer at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a non-profit research and advocacy organization, he is right: the section on agricultural biotechnology in the USMCA treaty does not have a solid enough legal base for the US government to initiate a trade dispute against Mexico over this issue, especially given the Mexican government’s legitimate concerns about health and the environment.
At the same time, the US Corn Growers Association and other US and Mexican lobbying groups insist that Mexico will not be able to grow enough non-GMO corn on its own territory to meet its needs. But US growers could comfortably fill the gap, says Clarkson: perhaps there would be a small price increase and it would take a little longer, perhaps as long as two years, to produce more unmodified seed. But if Mexico wants it, it can be done, she says.
If that were to happen, it could even spark a genuinely green counterrevolution in the US, as farmers abandon GMO varieties in order to maintain a key export market. Given enough time (which Mexico is now offering) and market incentives, many US corn farmers would happily revert to growing non-GMO corn, first for the Mexican market and then perhaps later for the domestic one.
Sifting through the comments to my last piece, many regular NC readers with experience and knowledge of the industry seem to concur:
If more than 92% of the corn grown in America is GMO, that means that more than 7% of the corn grown in America is GMO-Free. Why don’t the GMO-Free corn growers in America and the GMO-Free corn buyers in Mexico try to find each other? Why doesn’t the Non GMO Project try to get them in touch with each other?
Such a development may also go some way to reversing some of the hollowing out of local economies and communities that has taken place across large swathes of the corn belt, said Insouciant Iowan:
A switch to non-GMO corn would likely halt the depopulation of rural Iowa, since, as indicated, it requires attention that machines and glyphosate don’t give.
NC reader Truly raised some important technical and cost issues, while also noting that a partial shift away from GMO to non-GMO corn in the US could have significant implications for the actual meaning of efficiency for the country’s farmers:
Growing organic corn requires either mechanical or electrical cultivation. Mechanical means a big steel cultivator mounted to a tractor. Diggers churn the top soil in the gaps between the rows, killing weeds. They cant get the weeds right in the row, and they cant be used after corn gets over 2 feet tall. Electrical cultivating is the new big thing. It takes a lot of horsepower. My friend runs a 200+ HP tractor that has an additional 200+ HP alternator. This system actually “zaps” the weeds. They get hit with a bolt of juice, it fries even the roots. Similar limitations to mechanical cultivation.
As for nitrogen, organic turkey manure is selling like gold these days. You have to order it months in advance. Semiloads delivered to the field must then be reloaded into big (expensive) spreaders.
All this adds cost and labor to the project. And yields are significantly lower. My friends fields look like a weed patch to me. But organic sells at at least triple the price. maybe even up to 5 times higher.
As a commenter down thread notes, all of this is good for job creation. Right now the trends in farming are going huge or going tiny. The tiny operations seem competitive. Big ag suggests efficiency means the least amount of workers to work the most amount of land. I think it means how little land do you need to make a living. Our grandparents could raise a family of 8 on 80-160 acres. Now it takes 1000 plus acres to keep one farm family going.
Of course, if costs rise too high, that may price it out of range for many Mexican consumers and businesses. But hopefully by then Mexico will be much more self-sufficient in its production of yellow corn while also sourcing much of its imported non-GMO corn from other countries such as Brazil and Russia. And if that happens, US farmers could sell their wares to US consumers, some of whom will surely be prepared to pay a premium to enjoy the superior taste and health benefits of non-GMO corn. And that could ultimately feed through to significant improvements in both the diet and health of US consumers while at the same time protecting Mexico’s rich biodiversity.