The objective of the mobilizations is to pressure large importers & grain buyers, who buy subsidized US imports instead of national production.
Mexico’s Secretary of Economy touts a new trade policy of origin over price, yet the import of highly subsidized staple grains benefits US producers at the expense of Mexico’s domestic producers.
The relentless promotion of Free Trade Agreements has led to widespread privatization and deregulation, primarily benefiting corporations at the expense of the working class everywhere.
Mexican sugar exports face quotas in the US, but US corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup have no import restrictions in Mexico, a situation even worse than the original NAFTA agreement.
Mexico’s three year crisis is causing desperation, aggravated by US crop dumping, a hostile Agriculture Secretary, monopoly profiteering and an unwillingness from the government to protect agriculture and food sovereignty.
Citing insufficient support, bankruptcies, crop-dumping by the US, and abandoning Mexican food sovereignty in USMCA negotiations, farmers say the government’s ties to big business has pushed them to this national action.
Agro-Industrial crops are grown for export while heavily subsidized imports from the US destroy corn and basic grain production. Has the government decided to sacrifice Mexican agriculture to save free trade?
Farmers will seek to prevent the transit of heavily subsidized grains imported from the US & denounced the concentration of the food market by a small number of transnational corporations.
Returning to the Mesoamerican milpa agricutlural system could revitalize agriculture, while defending Mexicans and Mexico from a tangled, global necro-politics.
Mexican corn producers have been devastated by low prices resulting from the dumping of heavily subsidized corn from the US.