Mexico: Front line of the global food war

Mexico is rapidly turning into the main battleground in a cultural and commercial war over how the world grows its food — and it should come as no surprise that the conflict centers on the nation's most talismanic crop: corn.

It was, after all, in Mexico that people first cultivated maize from the teosinte plant 10,000 years ago. The country now boasts 64 different strains, which are mashed, fried and kneaded into at least 600 traditional dishes, from tortilla flatbreads — which most Mexicans eat on a daily basis — to spicy pozole soup.

In an astonishing twist of fate, however, the country that first farmed the crop now vies with Japan to be the world's biggest importer, and buys mainly genetically modified maize from the giant farms of the United States, with which it finds it hard to compete.

t is the left-leaning populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is now seeking to turn back that tide of U.S. products, as part of a broader push to revive national industries and support rural indigenous communities. In a shock declaration of war against Big Agri, he pledged last New Year's Eve to phase out GM corn by 2024, along with the ubiquitous pesticide glyphosate that is often sprayed on maize. The chemical is widely attacked by activists who argue that it damages soil and is a carcinogen. “Corn, this sacred plant, is from Mexico — yet we are the nation that imports the most corn around the world,” he proclaimed back in his inaugural speech in 2018. 

Mexico's maize mobilization exposes the most active fault line in global food policy. The United States is increasingly worried that a European-led movement against GM products and pesticides will spread, throwing up barriers to trade. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is warning that if the European Union triumphs in the contest to set global norms in reducing agrichemicals and going organic, the world will suffer a double hammer blow of reduced output and soaring food prices.

For Washington, the danger is that this movement is no longer safely confined to notoriously GM-phobic and anti-pesticide French politicians 4,000 miles away, but has reached a massive market right on its border, and within its own free trade area. In May, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai met Mexico's Economy Secretary Tatiana Clouthier to stress the importance of "science-and risk-based regulatory approaches in agriculture." Washington has long slammed the EU for not basing its reservations to GM on "sound science," but the challenge to modern agricultural orthodoxy is now uncomfortably close to home.

In response to the deindustrializing farming trends in Europe, the United States has launched a rival coalition of countries whose goal will be to maintain "sustainable productivity growth." In an initial list of partners last month, Washington said Brazil, Australia and the Philippines were on all board.

Mexico was not on the list.

Most Americans and Europeans are used to maize kernels simply being a uniform yellow — but many Mexican small farmers would point to that being clear evidence of Big Agri's assault on the diversity of their heritage crop. In Mexico, don't be shocked to see corn speckled with pinks and blues. “We have varieties that are white, creamy yellow, black, blue, red and dappled,” said Pánfilo Hernández Ortiz, a member of the Vicente Guerrero Group, which represents smallholder farmers in the central state of Tlaxcala, and advocates for traditional farming practices.