Is Mexican agriculture shifting ahead or backward?
9 December 2024
4 minute learn
Editor’s be aware: 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, know-how, sustainable farming, financial progress 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 pronounces meals and agriculture plan that might take the nation again to the Eighties,” mentioned the AP’s headline. I’ve nothing in opposition to the Eighties, however Mexican farmers and customers require a future that appears ahead relatively than backward.
President Sheinbaum says she desires to commit our nation’s agriculture to a precept of “self-sufficiency” during which Mexican farmers develop all of the corn and beans that Mexicans eat.
“It’s about producing what we eat,” says Sheinbaum.
This idea is enticing within the summary. The power to handle your self and your loved ones with out help from others is a worthy purpose. It will possibly enhance confidence and resilience and result in higher dwelling.
But President Sheinbaum’s agriculture program is the truth is the other of self-sufficiency. It quantities to a welfare program aimed toward selling manufacturing within the Mexican countryside by small and medium-sized farmers, targeted on primarily corn and beans, directing them to develop what the federal government helps relatively than permitting them to answer the market alerts that signify what customers actually need. It additionally affords 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 an enormous 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 know-how.
No one is actually self-sufficient. That’s why we dwell in communities. Everybody depends on different individuals.
A bus driver in Mexico Metropolis who eats a taco for lunch will depend 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 chargeable for the corn that goes into the tortilla.
In a single sense, this bus driver isn’t self-sufficient. But if he earns an sincere wage that pays for what he consumes, we are able to moderately name him “self-sufficient.”
We must always take into consideration Mexican meals the identical means. Our farmers can produce a variety of what we want—nevertheless 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 change 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 must always search to develop commerce and strengthen it, relatively than shrink it and weaken it, which appears to be a purpose of President Sheinbaum’s proposal.
We additionally want entry to know-how. Taking agriculture “again to the Eighties” means taking it again to an period of decrease manufacturing, increased costs, and fewer concern for conservation.
In current many years, progress in know-how 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 know-how, 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 means.
Moderately than attempting to return Mexican agriculture to its low-tech previous, via 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 aims.
Mexico’s greatest challenges with meals manufacturing and meals safety contain the rising price of assets reminiscent of fertilizers, the necessity for entry to efficient crop safety, and the damaging 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 aimed toward most of the people.
But wholesome consuming begins with wholesome farms—and wholesome farms require leaders who look forward to a way forward for self-sufficiency grounded in commerce and know-how.
Study extra at World Farmer Community® – the farmers’ voice in selling commerce, know-how, sustainable farming, financial progress and meals safety.
