The United States is the world’s largest agricultural power. Mexico’s food supply depends, in large part, on the grains, oilseeds and meat it sells us. We are the main destination for U.S. exports of corn, pork and pork products, dairy products, meat and poultry products, wheat and sugar. We are second in soybean meal and prepared foods. And third in soybeans (https://shorturl.at/1Nrph). In terms of food, we are subordinate to our neighbor to the north. Almost three quarters of the food we buy from abroad comes from there. They are not just luxury goods (which there are). They are mainly foodstuffs that we need and consume on a daily basis. Let us imagine for a moment what would happen if, for whatever reason, it were to stop supplying us. Uncle Sam is also the most important buyer of our agricultural products: it purchases 92 percent of our foreign sales in this area. In 2023 they reached more than 41.9 billion dollars.
We have almost all our eggs in the same basket. What would Mexico do if, from one day to the next, it were to find itself with thousands of liters of beer and tequila and tons of avocados, red fruits or tomatoes that it could not sell in the markets where it used to? Many of these businesses are in the hands of transnational conglomerates. Beer sales to the U.S. alone represent 13 percent of our agricultural exports to the neighboring country. However, the two most important Mexican breweries are part of international portfolios.
Cuauhtémoc-Moctezuma is owned by Heineken. Modelo is a subsidiary of AB-InBev, the world’s largest brewer. In addition, we buy grain, barley and corn starch from the U.S. to make the beverage. Tequila exports to our neighbor account for 10 percent of our agricultural sales to that nation. But that wealth does not stay here. Many of the major tequileras have been acquired by multinationals. In 2002, Cazadores was swallowed up by Bacardi, Sauza was bought by Beam Future Brands, Viuda de Romero was acquired by Pernord Ricard and Herradura by Brown Forman Corporation. U.S. purchases of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries from Mexico accounted for 6 percent of its agricultural imports with us in 2023.
Interestingly, the main packers or agro-exporters are gringo-owned companies. About half of the industry is in Driscoll’s hands. The same happens with other fruit and vegetable activities. This preponderance of large corporate sharks in agro-exports is also a constant in other product chains in the domestic market.
Among many examples, small coffee growers face Nestlé and Andatti-Femsa; medium grain farmers face flour mills like Minsa and Maseca; family farmers face pig factories like Smithfield; and small poultry farmers face giants like Bachoco and JBS. Up against the sharks, some 5.3 million ejidatarios, communal farmers and their families struggle to survive and remain campesinos.
They get by by combining production for self-consumption, in which they sow to harvest food, not money, small-scale cash crops, remittances from their relatives in the US, direct government support, day labor and salaried work in construction or services in the cities.
Migration, temporary or permanent, to the cities, agricultural fields or to the US is part of their life trajectory. As we explained in another article (https://shorturl.at/F2K0p), this agricultural model focused on exports and dominated by agribusinesses, which began with Mexico’s entry into GATT in 1986, was consolidated with the agrarian counter-reform to the 27th Constitution in 1992, and was padlocked to close the door with NAFTA in 1994, the signing of free trade agreements with 40 countries and the T-MEC, remains intact. It has gone hand in hand with the purchase and renting of the best lands of the social sector, the appropriation of water concessions, the control of seeds and the proletarianization of campesinos.
In recent years, the agro-export model has remained intact, although most subsidies to commercial agriculture, which produces staple crops, have disappeared and have been replaced by direct subsidies aimed at providing economic assistance to vulnerable sectors of the population. The combination of the lack of productive support and the climate crisis has eroded the sector’s profitability and reduced the margins of food self-sufficiency. There is a lack of resources for development, financing, agricultural insurance and marketing. Programs (some of them questionable) that gave certainty to marketing have been eliminated. Now, those who farm as a business do not want to take risks. And, there is no evidence that rainfed production has grown.
In addition to deepening food dependency, the dominant agricultural model has an anti-campesino bias. As important as they are, the direct transfers given to farmers do not enable them to face the unfair competition of highly subsidized imports from the US, nor the savage exploitation of labor in the fields of horticultural export crops, nor the abusive intervention of large agro-industrial sharks in the marketing of key products, nor the monopolization of the best land, water and seeds. Without substantive resources and another rural policy, our food self-sufficiency will be further and further away. Incidentally, we run the risk of being left with a countryside without campesinos.
Source: Schools For Chiapas