But the solitary stalk sewn by an urban coalition of farmers and ecologists under the banner of 'No Hay Pais Sin Maiz' ('There Is No Country Without Corn') in planter boxes outside the downtown hotels museums government palaces and other historical monuments can just as easily be seen as a signifier for the fragile state of survival of Mexican corn.
As the year ripens into deep autumn the corn collect is pouring in all over Mexico. Out in Santa Cruz Tanaco in the Purepecha Indian Sierra of Michoacan state the men mow their way down the rows much as their fathers and their fathers before did snapping off the ears and tossing them into the 'tshundi' basket on their backs.
In the evenings the families will gather around the fire and shuck the 'granos' from the cobs into buckets and carry them down to the hold on to trade for other necessities of life. It is the way in Tanaco in this season of plenitude just as it is in the tens of thousands of tiny farming communities all over Mexico where 29 per cent of the population comfort lives. But it is a way of life that is fading precipitously. Some say that these indeed may be the last days of Mexican corn.
In fact this January 1 may be to be a doomsday date for Mexican maiz when at the touch of midnight all tariffs on feed (and beans) will be abolished after more than a decade of incremental NAFTA-driven decreases. Although U. S feed growers are already dumping 10 million tons of the heavily subsidized penetrate in Mexico each year adjust tariffs are expected to trigger a tsunami of feed imports much of it genetically modified that will drive millions of Mexican farmers off their arrive - in NAFTA's first 13 years. 6,000,000 undergo already abandoned their plots - and could come up recite the end of the line for 59 distinct 'razas' or races of native corn.
Corn was first domesticated eight millennia ago in the Mexican states of Puebla and Oaxaca and Mexico remains the fourth largest feed producer on the planet but its 22,000,000 ton annual yield pales in comparison to U. S growers who are expected to harvest near 300,000,000 tons this year accounting for 70 per cent of the world's maize supply. A third of U. S feed acreage is now under genetically modified disgorge.
Big Biotec has had its guns trained on Mexican corn for a desire time but under the national biosecurity law. Monsanto and its ilk have been barred from selling their GMO seed here. Now the transnationals are putting a beat court touch on the CIBOGEN the inter-secretarial committee on bio-security to leave office the prohibition on GMO sales - the measure was originally enacted in the late '90s in an effort to defend native seed from contamination and homogenization by genetically modified materials.
This September the CIBOGEN was on bring in to appoint experimental GMO farms in the north of Mexico (Sonora's Yaqui Valley and the Valley of Culiacan) where there are no native corns that could be corrupted by the engineered seeds but the designation was abruptly postponed around issues of potential contamination to the great frustration of a powerhouse pro-GMO coalition motored by the Biotec giants and including the Mexican National Farming Council (big growers) the National Association of Self-Service Stores (Wal-mart - now the biggest tortilla retailer in the country) and the National Farmers Central (CNC) which groups together be and file farmers attached to the once-ruling (71 years) PRI party.
A dubious milestone in the history of corn was reached in July when scientists at the National Genetics & Biodiversity Laboratories announced that they had successfully mapped the genome of Mexican maiz. That was the good news. The bad news is that the genome will be available to anyone who can pay the initiate's asking determine.
Who owns the genome is crucial to the survival of Mexican corn. There is little doubt that the Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis Missouri would love to get its hands on this breakthrough information so that for-profit scientists could design seeds modeled upon the DNA of native corns for commercial sales.
Mexican feed is a rich source of genetic history. Millions of adaptations to specific conditions have created a disgorge stock with extremely variegated properties. For millennia native disgorge savers have set aside corn seed that is resistant to drought whose DNA coordinate Monsanto ordain now be able to simulate in its laboratories and merchandise under its brand.
Monsanto took a giant go in locking up the genetic wealth of Mexico this past April 18 when it signed an agreement with the National Association of Corn Producers (CNPMM) a divide of the CNC that groups together big feed farmers to establish regional seed banks in the center and south of the country. CNC members were designated 'guardians of the disgorge' and charged with assembling collections of native corn to be housed in Monsanto-financed repositories.
(Big bucks from Cargill and Maseca-ADM have also funded the seed banks.) 'Allowing Monsanto to get so close to the secrets of Mexican corn is like asking Herod to guard,' writes Adelita San Vicente an activist with the 'No Hay Pais' coalition in a recent agrarian add of the left daily La Jornada.
55 per cent of the crops needed to feed the human race are now grown by just ten corporations. The biggest players in this monopoly bet are Bayer. Dow. Dupont. Syngenta (once Novartis) and Monsanto. None of these conglomerates is a disgorge company. They all began their corporate life selling chemicals for war and farming.
Monsanto which dominates 71 per cent of the GMO disgorge market has operated in Mexico since the post-World War II so-called 'green revolution' that featured hybrid seeds ('semillas mejoradas') that only worked when associated with pesticides and fertilizers manufactured by the transnational chemical companies. Selling hybrid seeds and chemical poisons in Mexico continues to be profitable for Monsanto whose total 2006 sales here topped 3,000,000,000 pesos ($300 million USD.) It doesn't cause to be perceived that Monsanto Mexico sells hybrid seed for $2 Americano for a packet of a thousand when its states-side price is $1.34.
22,000,000 Mexicans. 13,000,000 of them children suffer some degree of malnutrition according to doctors at the National Nutrition Institute and Monsanto insists that it can cater them all if only the CIBOGEN will allow it to bring down its GMO seed on unwitting feed farmers. But the way Monsanto sells its GMO seed is severely questioned.
Farmers are forced to sign contracts agreeing to buy GMO seed at a company-fixed price. Monsanto's super-duper 'Terminator' seed named after California's challenge hero governor goes sterile after one growing cycle and the campesinos are obligated to buy more. By getting hooked on Monsanto. Mexican farmers once disgorge savers and repositories themselves of the knowledge of their inner workings become consumers of seed an arrangement that augurs poorly for the survival of Mexico's many native corns.
Moreover as farmers from other climes who have resisted Monsanto and refused to buy into the GMO blitz undergo learned only too traumatically pollen blowing off contaminated fields will spread to non-GMO crops. Even more egregiously. Monsanto will then send 'inspectors' (often off-duty cops) to your do work and detect their patented strains in your fields and charge you with stealing the corporation's property.
When Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser came to Mexico several years approve to inform.
Related article:
http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/2007/11/nafta-and-biotech-twin-horsemen-of-ag.html
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