9 December 2024

4 minute read

By: Cesar Galaviz

North America

Editor's note: This article, authored by Cesar Galaviz, first ran on the Global Farmer Network website. Established in 2000, the Global Farmer Network amplifies the farmers’ voice in promoting trade, technology, sustainable farming, economic growth and food security.

Mexico’s new president seeks to turn back the clock on farmers.

This was how the Associated Press viewed the new agricultural plan of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office last month. 

“Mexico announces food and agriculture plan that could take the country back to the 1980s,” said the AP’s headline. I have nothing against the 1980s, but Mexican farmers and consumers require a future that looks forward rather than backward.

President Sheinbaum says she wants to commit our country’s agriculture to a principle of “self-sufficiency” in which Mexican farmers grow all the corn and beans that Mexicans eat.

“It is about producing what we consume,” says Sheinbaum.

This concept is attractive in the abstract. The ability to take care of yourself and your family without assistance from others is a worthy goal. It can improve confidence and resilience and lead to better living.

Yet President Sheinbaum’s agriculture program is in fact the opposite of self-sufficiency. It amounts to a welfare program aimed at promoting production in the Mexican countryside by small and medium-sized farmers, focused on mainly corn and beans, directing them to grow what the government supports rather than allowing them to respond to the market signals that represent what consumers really want. It also offers nothing to the large-scale farmers like me, who are essential to achieving food security for our nation.

As a third-generation farmer in Mexico’s breadbasket region of Sinaloa, I grow corn, beans, chickpeas, sorghum, and mangoes. Farmers can grow almost anything here, and our region is a big part of why Mexico is already self-sufficient in the production of white corn for human consumption in the form of tortillas and other staple foods.

Yet I’d like to propose a different vision of self-sufficiency—one that relies on Mexican farmers to do what they do best and also embraces the benefits of trade and technology.

Nobody is truly self-sufficient. That’s why we live in communities. Everyone relies on other people.

A bus driver in Mexico City who eats a taco for lunch depends on ranchers who produce beef, vegetable growers who raise lettuce and tomatoes, and dairy farmers who make cheese. He also needs farmers like me, because we’re responsible for the corn that goes into the tortilla.

In one sense, this bus driver is not self-sufficient. Yet if he earns an honest wage that pays for what he consumes, we can reasonably call him “self-sufficient.”

We should think about Mexican food the same way. Our farmers can produce a lot of what we need—but it’s also okay to buy and sell across borders. Mexico, for example, does not grow enough yellow corn and beans for its livestock. We import much of it from the United States, in a fair exchange of goods and services that also allows us to export avocados, beef, tequila, and more.

These trade networks in fact enable our self-sufficiency. We should seek to expand trade and strengthen it, rather than shrink it and weaken it, which seems to be a goal of President Sheinbaum’s proposal.

We also need access to technology. Taking agriculture “back to the 1980s” means taking it back to an era of lower production, higher prices, and less concern for conservation.

In recent decades, progress in technology has allowed many of us to hold in our pockets more computing power than the biggest supercomputers of previous generations. Farmers also have enjoyed a revolution in technology, in everything from seed genetics to precision planting powered by GPS satellites.

We’re better than ever at growing food in a sustainable way.

Rather than trying to return Mexican agriculture to its low-tech past, through the promotion of certain commodities and subsidizing sales at government-run stores, we should encourage farmers to innovate as they grow what people want and achieve both environmental and economic objectives.

Mexico’s biggest challenges with food production and food security involve the rising cost of resources such as fertilizers, the need for access to effective crop protection, and the dangerous scarcity of water in a world of drought and climate change. They have little to do with President Sheinbaum’s dream of self-sufficiency—and need more attention from our government.

I share one concern with President Sheinbaum, who says she wants Mexicans to improve their diets. Everyone can eat better. Success starts with education in the schools and perhaps with a campaign aimed at the general public.

Yet healthy eating begins with healthy farms—and healthy farms require leaders who look ahead to a future of self-sufficiency grounded in trade and technology.

Learn more at Global Farmer Network^® - the farmers’ voice in promoting trade, technology, sustainable farming, economic growth and food security.