Mexican Farmers Protest, But Nobody’s Listening

Harvesting Corn In Mexico By Hand

Dozens of Mexican farmers blocked a lane of the border bridge from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso for 36 hours to protest the removal of Mexico’s last tariffs on US and Canadian farm goods.  The protest ended today.

Activists lifted a blockade at the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday, ending a 36-hour protest against the removal of Mexico’s last tariffs on U.S. and Canadian farm goods.

Mexico abolished its last protective tariffs on basic crops like corn, beans and sugar on Tuesday, under the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Mexican farmers have complained they won’t be able to compete with U.S. farmers who can sell cheaper products because they receive government subsidies.

Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church has warned that the changes could spark an exodus to the U.S.

“It is clear that many farmers will have a difficult time competing in the domestic market, and that could cause a large number of farmers to leave their farms,” the archdiocese said in a statement issued on New Year’s Day.

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More across the Rio Pequeno.

The protest was about stopping unrestricted imports of US corn in Mexico.  The protesters had pledged to stop US grain from entering Mexico, but none of the trucks they stopped were carrying corn. The blockade was lifted around noon today.

Front pages of Mexican newspapers, meanwhile, were filled with predictions that the trade opening would hurt Mexican food production and cause conflict.

“The open battle against NAFTA begins,” read a banner headline in the daily La Jornada.

/snip

“This is going to be a complicated year, and there will certainly be a lot of demonstrations,” said Enrique Perez, a spokesman for the National Association of Farm Distributors, one of the groups organizing the marches.

Mexico, the birthplace of corn, obtained a 15-year protection for sensitive farm crops when NAFTA was negotiated in 1993. That protection period ran out on Jan. 1. Mexico still grows almost all of the corn consumed here by humans, but imports corn to feed animals.

Of course, you didn’t read about this on the front page of traditional media in the US.  What a surprise!  Is that because the flow of goods is into Mexico and not the US?

Meanwhile, according to the Hartford Courant:

Mexico has plunged deeply into a model of globalized agriculture in which farmers are ill-prepared to compete, and even people who don’t farm for a living are suffering.

Nobody knows that better than Vicente Martinez, who grows corn, beans and some coffee in the green mountains of Tepetlan, Veracruz. In July, his daughter Felictas died trying to cross the desert to enter the United States. Martinez blamed a combination of free trade and dwindling government farm-support programs that leave rural families with little choice but to migrate. His daughter found no work in their farming town to support her four children other than cleaning houses for little pay.

“The only thing left to do is run for the United States … or sit around looking like idiots, because there’s nothing to do here, nothing,” said Martinez, whose daughter was abandoned by a people smuggler in Arizona.

In other words, because Mexican farmers with small plots of land cannot produce enough for their own needs and have little left to sell, they cannot survive.  Rising prices for what they buy means economic ruin for them. How can this be when prices for corn and beans are up?

And while global prices for these commodities are booming, Mexico’s farm parcels tend to be tiny and only marginally productive, so higher prices internationally have done little to improve people’s lives here.

Farmers like Juan Antonio Lopez, who plants corn on about 7.5 acres in Pino Suarez, Durango, have little corn left over to sell, and often must buy grain at higher international prices for their families and animals.

Even somewhat larger farms have trouble storing crops and getting them to market, in part because the government has allowed state purchasing agencies, granaries and distribution networks to wither, preferring instead to rely on market forces.

Subsidies to Mexican farmers for corn production have stopped, in part because NAFTA purports to forbid them.  Plans to increase production during the 15-year NAFTA hiatus have produced no results.  US agriculture is still receiving subsidies for corn production. And so the subsistence model of Mexican corn growing leaves the smallest farmers desperate.  US farmers have advantages of scale and of subsidies.  The disparity between Mexican and American farmers is yet another reason for immigrants to flee these conditions and enter the US.  The connection between the two is extremely strong.  But in the presidential debates about immigration the topics of NAFTA and global corn prices are seldom, if ever, on the agenda.

And the effect of all this in the US?  The Houston Chronicle is reporting that US corn growers see this as a good step: Mexico provides an additional market.

For South Texas corn farmer Brian Jones, the lifting of the last agricultural tariffs under NAFTA on Tuesday could make for a more profitable new year.

“It has helped us just because of the extra outlet for sales,” said Jones, a fourth-generation farmer. “It’s just grown our market.”

So don’t expect to hear about this protest in the traditional media.  And don’t expect to read about the connections between NAFTA and immigration.  Expect instead to hear more of the nonsense that a higher, longer, more technological wall is just what’s needed.