Sustainable Systems, pt. 2

Meanwhile, in Mexico, a significant portion of the population is still growing corn. Did you know that Mexico has the world's largest genetic diversity of corn? Yep--not all corn is white and yellow, and a good deal of it is native to Mexico. Farms here continue to be small, where people do their best to keep their families fed, and hope to sell or trade the little extra they can produce to cover the rest. In fact, in some parts of Mexico, tortilla--not even all corn products, but just tortillas--continue to make up 70% of people's daily nutritional intake in 2011.

In the late 1980s, the States looked south to poor struggling Mexico, and thought, Let's give these guys a hand. So in 1992, NAFTA was signed into effect. The idea was that if we remove a few of the major barriers to trade, everyone will be better able to thrive economically. But what was really in that agreement? First of all, those pesky corn quotas that had been protecting the Mexican market from foreign supply had to be done away with. The original plan was to phase them out over 15 years; they were gone in 30 months. Secondly, Mexico was required to eliminate all of their corn subsidies, even though the States increased theirs.
Very suddenly, Mexico was flooded with cheap yellow corn from the States, and instead of helping farmers transition to other crops (which would have been easier over 15 years than 30 months), it invested in maquiladoras, or foreign-owned factories. Since 1994, 5 million Mexican farmers have lost their jobs because there is simply no way for them to compete with the low price of American corn (remember, we can sell at 20% below production!). Besides that, the Mexican population depends much more heavily on corn products (especially masa, a very simple cornmeal dough), and the Mexican government has very little control over the market price of an imported product.

But what do you do, when all you've ever known is farming, and suddenly that opportunity is taken away from you? If you are one of those 5 million who was still farming in 1994, you probably live in an area where a college isn't immediately available to you, even if you could leave your family long enough to better your future in that way. Even if you were lucky enough to have studied past elementary school as a child. You're unlikely to learn to use a computer or speak English, two skills that are required for many jobs here. You would probably need to move to a city, just to have a chance at finding work.
If you've made it this long as a farmer, you might look at struggling for a few years through a transition to another crop. 30% of the land that is still arable in Mexico is being used to grow drug plants. Growing marijuana might be a little risky, but certainly profitable; coca a little more of each. But it must be profitable enough to be able to buy everything you need, since your family can't eat a little bit of the marijuana you grow and sell what's left over.

What if you heard that there is a place where there was an abundance of work for people who know how to farm, and that wages there are high? Could you look at your children or your mother or your spouse and tell them no, you wouldn't go? But remember, you are poor, and your chances of getting a visa to enter the United States of America are pretty slim. Could you risk not taking a chance anyway?
There's the idea of corn in Mexico. Tomorrow we'll get to the main idea of it all, and the small changes you can make in your household to make a big difference.

Many thanks to Susanna at BorderLinks for the statistics listed here, and for her work with the Sustainable Foods project there.
Thanks also to Ross Gandy, professor at the National University in Mexico City for the statistics on drug production.