Corn Producers: Agreement with Government Only Partially Meets Demands

ByAlexia Villaseñor and Jared Laureles

This article by Alexia Villaseñor and Jared Laureles originally appeared in the October 29, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier left wing daily newspaper.

Mexico City. With an agreement that “partially” meets the demands of corn producers in the Bajío region (Jalisco, Michoacán and Guanajuato), farmers will receive government support of 950 pesos per ton of corn, an increase of 100 pesos from the offer made by federal authorities on Monday.

After negotiations that lasted just over five hours at the Ministry of the Interior, representatives of producers indicated that there was progress on the four central demands they presented to the Secretary of Agriculture and Social Development (SADER), Julio Berdegué.

While the main demand since the protests began on Monday with road blockades and an initial dialogue with the head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER), was to reach a base price of 7,200 pesos per ton of corn, Pável Guerrero acknowledged that this point was difficult to achieve in these negotiations. However, he reported that they agreed not to formalize the base price of 5,200 pesos offered by the government. Therefore, he said, each producer will seek ways to negotiate directly with the tortilla and corn industry to increase that base price.

To advance the next rounds of dialogue where they will address the operating rules of programs and determine the dates for state support payments, the representatives of producers of this basic grain pledged to ask their colleagues who are maintaining the blockades to begin removing them.

“We apologize to the citizens we have affected; that was not our intention, but we hope they can understand us because the situation for farmers, not only of corn but of other grains, is very complicated,” Guerrero said.