Is Mexican agriculture transferring ahead or backward?
9 December 2024
4 minute learn
Editor’s word: This text, authored by Cesar Galaviz, first ran on the World Farmer Community web site. Established in 2000, the World Farmer Community amplifies the farmers’ voice in selling commerce, expertise, sustainable farming, financial development and meals safety.
Mexico’s new president seeks to show again the clock on farmers.
This was how the Related Press seen the brand new agricultural plan of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took workplace final month.
“Mexico declares meals and agriculture plan that would take the nation again to the Nineteen Eighties,” mentioned the AP’s headline. I’ve nothing towards the Nineteen Eighties, however Mexican farmers and shoppers require a future that appears ahead slightly than backward.
President Sheinbaum says she desires to commit our nation’s agriculture to a precept of “self-sufficiency” by which Mexican farmers develop all of the corn and beans that Mexicans eat.
“It’s about producing what we devour,” says Sheinbaum.
This idea is enticing within the summary. The flexibility to deal with your self and your loved ones with out help from others is a worthy objective. It could actually enhance confidence and resilience and result in higher dwelling.
But President Sheinbaum’s agriculture program is the truth is the alternative of self-sufficiency. It quantities to a welfare program geared toward selling manufacturing within the Mexican countryside by small and medium-sized farmers, centered on primarily corn and beans, directing them to develop what the federal government helps slightly than permitting them to reply to the market alerts that signify what shoppers actually need. It additionally presents nothing to the large-scale farmers like me, who’re important to attaining meals safety for our nation.
As a third-generation farmer in Mexico’s breadbasket area of Sinaloa, I develop corn, beans, chickpeas, sorghum, and mangoes. Farmers can develop virtually something right here, and our area is a giant a part of why Mexico is already self-sufficient within the manufacturing of white corn for human consumption within the type of tortillas and different staple meals.
But I’d wish to suggest a distinct imaginative and prescient of self-sufficiency—one which depends on Mexican farmers to do what they do greatest and in addition embraces the advantages of commerce and expertise.
No person is actually self-sufficient. That’s why we stay in communities. Everybody depends on different individuals.
A bus driver in Mexico Metropolis who eats a taco for lunch relies on ranchers who produce beef, vegetable growers who elevate lettuce and tomatoes, and dairy farmers who make cheese. He additionally wants farmers like me, as a result of we’re answerable for the corn that goes into the tortilla.
In a single sense, this bus driver will not be self-sufficient. But if he earns an trustworthy wage that pays for what he consumes, we are able to moderately name him “self-sufficient.”
We should always take into consideration Mexican meals the identical approach. Our farmers can produce lots of what we’d like—however it’s additionally okay to purchase and promote throughout borders. Mexico, for instance, doesn’t develop sufficient yellow corn and beans for its livestock. We import a lot of it from the USA, in a good alternate of products and providers that additionally permits us to export avocados, beef, tequila, and extra.
These commerce networks the truth is allow our self-sufficiency. We should always search to broaden commerce and strengthen it, slightly than shrink it and weaken it, which appears to be a objective of President Sheinbaum’s proposal.
We additionally want entry to expertise. Taking agriculture “again to the Nineteen Eighties” means taking it again to an period of decrease manufacturing, larger costs, and fewer concern for conservation.
In latest many years, progress in expertise has allowed many people to carry in our pockets extra computing energy than the largest supercomputers of earlier generations. Farmers even have loved a revolution in expertise, in all the pieces from seed genetics to precision planting powered by GPS satellites.
We’re higher than ever at rising meals in a sustainable approach.
Relatively than making an attempt to return Mexican agriculture to its low-tech previous, by way of the promotion of sure commodities and subsidizing gross sales at government-run shops, we should always encourage farmers to innovate as they develop what individuals need and obtain each environmental and financial goals.
Mexico’s largest challenges with meals manufacturing and meals safety contain the rising price of sources similar to fertilizers, the necessity for entry to efficient crop safety, and the harmful shortage of water in a world of drought and local weather change. They’ve little to do with President Sheinbaum’s dream of self-sufficiency—and wish extra consideration from our authorities.
I share one concern with President Sheinbaum, who says she desires Mexicans to enhance their diets. Everybody can eat higher. Success begins with schooling within the faculties and maybe with a marketing campaign geared toward most people.
But wholesome consuming begins with wholesome farms—and wholesome farms require leaders who sit up for a way forward for self-sufficiency grounded in commerce and expertise.
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