Humanitarian Alternatives

Green Revolution initiatives in Africa promise “sustainable intensification”, productivity improvements to grow more food on the same land. In fact, donors to such initiatives need to reconsider such investments, which have prompted land-grabs rather than productivity improvements.

IATP Blog (also available in Spanish)

Since Mexico imposed its restrictions on genetically modified (GM) corn in tortillas last February as precautionary measures to protect public health and corn biodiversity, the U.S. government has repeatedly justified its challenge to the policies under the countries' trade agreement with the claim that the policies were not based on science. Mexico has now filed its formal response to the U.S. in the trade dispute. Published March 5, Mexico shows that it has the latest independent science firmly on its side.

Ken Roseboro and Timothy A. Wise, Food Tank

One of the glaring flaws in the U.S. case against Mexico’s restrictions on GM corn is the claim: that Mexico’s restrictions have impacted trade significantly and caused harm to U.S. producers. In fact, Mexico’s limits affect barely 1% of U.S. corn exports to Mexico. And those farmers could benefit from the GM corn restrictions if they switched to non-GM white corn and earned premium prices. Farm Action estimated they could collectively earn more than $7 million, which should be welcome to US farmers facing plummeting corn prices.

Food Tank (in Spanish at Pie de Página)

The Christmas holidays in the United States are nothing compared to the celebrations in Mexico. And even less so compared to those in the indigenous southern state of Oaxaca,. The mezcal flows freely all the way through New Year’s Eve to Three Kings Day January 6. The Three Kings brought gifts, but the Three Panelists empowered to settle the ongoing trade dispute between the U.S. and Mexico over genetically modified corn seem not to be in the same festive spirit, raising questions of cultural insensitivity with their first decisions.

CAMBRIDGE, MA., Dec 11 2023 (IPS) - The dispute mounted by the U.S. government over Mexico’s policies to restrict the use of genetically modified corn is the latest example of the misuse of a trade agreement to impede social programs in Mexico and other countries. The U.S. government has been doing this for years.

Timothy A. Wise and Mutinta Nketani, The Elephant (Kenya)

Some say that if you don’t have a seat at the table you are probably on the menu. That’s the way Zambian farmers are feeling. Zambia is one of several countries targeted for so-called “agro-poles,” 250,000-acre blocks of land often taken from local communities to attract agribusiness investment. On the menu indeed.

Food Tank

When I arrived in Mexico City nine years ago to research the effort by citizen groups to stop multinational seed companies from planting genetically modified corn in Mexico, the groups had just won an injunction to suspend planting permits. I asked their lead lawyer, Rene Sánchez Galindo, how he thought they could hope to overcome the massive economic and legal power of the companies and government. He said with a smile, “The judge surely eats tacos. Everyone here eats tacos. They know maize is different.”

IATP Blog

U.S. attempts to stop Mexico’s restrictions on GM corn have garnered the headlines, but the bigger story may be a sweeping set of food self-sufficiency policies of which the GM corn restrictions are a part. I recently interviewed Victor Suárez, Mexico’s Undersecretary of Agriculture for Food Self-Sufficiency, about that ambitious agenda. The full interview with Suárez is published on IATP’s web site in English and Spanish. I summarize some of the highlights in this article for IATP.

This article appeared in Spanish in La Jornada del Campo on September 5 as part of a 10-article opinion section on the ongoing trade dispute between the U.S. and Mexico over Mexico's policies restricting genetically modified corn and glyphosate.

Industrial agriculture has failed to eliminate food insecurity in Africa. It is time for a radically different approach.

CAMBRIDGE, MA., Aug 29 2023 (InterPress Service) - As the adage goes, when you find yourself stuck in a hole, stop digging. As African leaders and their philanthropic and bilateral sponsors prepare for another glitzy African Green Revolution Forum, convening September 5-8 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, they are instead handing out new shovels to dig the continent deeper into a hunger crisis caused in part by their failing obsession with corporate-led industrialized agriculture.

In this interview with the Mexico Solidarity Project, Timothy A. Wise discusses the U.S. government’s efforts to prevent the Mexican government from restricting the use of genetically modified corn and the herbicide glyphosate.

IATP published this article after I returned from Mexico to the U.S. escalation of its trade dispute over genetically modified corn, as monocultures of the genetically modified mind in the U.S. confront the precautionary science of diversity and public health in Mexico.

IPS News

On June 2, the U.S. government escalated its conflict with Mexico over that country’s restrictions on genetically modified corn, initiating the formal dispute-resolution process under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). It is only the latest in a decades-long U.S. assault on Mexico’s food sovereignty using the blunt instrument of a trade agreement that has inundated Mexico with cheap corn, wheat, and other staples, undermining Mexico’s ability to produce its own food. (Also available in Spanish.)

What is agricultural dumping? This primer explains the unfair trade practice. From:

Swimming Against the Tide: Mexico’s quest for food sovereignty in the face of U.S. agricultural dumping, Appendix 2, by Timothy A. Wise, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Report, May 2023.

https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/2023-05/swimming-against-tide.2.pdf

Not only is the U.S. government currently disputing Mexico's decision to restrict some uses of genetically modified corn, but it has also contributed to Mexico's levels of import dependence on key staples, such as corn, wheat, beans, rice and dairy. A new report demonstrates that the U.S.' practice of agricultural dumping of cheap exports into Mexico has hampered the Mexican government’s efforts to improve food self-sufficiency. 

Read the full report or executive summary in English or Spanish

Food Tank

On March 29, the Mexican government laid out the science behind its GMO corn restrictions in an impressive virtual conference organized by CONACYT, the government’s highest science body. Hopefully U.S. trade officials were watching. The U.S. stance may be unequivocal, but the science is anything but settled. Particularly the science of precaution.

Chapter 7 of Eating Tomorrow, excerpted with permission

As controversy rages over Mexico’s determination to restrict the planting and importation of genetically modified corn, this chapter of Eating Tomorrow chronicles the former Mexican government’s attempt to allow Monsanto and other multinational seed companies to grow GM corn in Mexico, putting the country’s rich store of native corn at risk of what critics decried as “genetic pollution.” The effort was stopped by a determined alliance of farmer, environmental, and consumer groups, and now supported by a Mexican government committed to food soversignty.

Food Tank

On January 9, President Joe Biden will travel to Mexico City to meet with Canada's Justin Trudeau and Mexico's Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador in an occasional "Three Amigos" summit. One contentious item on the agenda is Mexico's looming restriction on imports of genetically modified corn. Agribusiness leaders have stoked alarms about the economic and food-security impacts, but as I explain in Food Tank there is little cause for alarm. CropLife and other agribusiness interests commissioned an "independent" economic study to stoke fear. (A version of this article appears in Spanish in La Jornada del Campo.)

IATP Policy Brief

As Mexico and the US continue to negotiate trade issues related to Mexico’s planned restrictions on imports of genetically modified corn, agribusiness and biotechnology organizations sponsored a study that claims there will be huge economic damage from Mexico’s actions. Wise identifies the many false assumptions that produce inflated estimates of harm.