The first action of the current government’s Plan Mexico aims to expand food self-sufficiency, a failed intention, of President López Obrador’s government, which, in the new international context of trade tensions with the United States, is becoming increasingly urgent. Although it is not possible to achieve food self-sufficiency in the free market, reducing dependence on food imports cannot be postponed.
Luis Hernández Navarro warned when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented that the United States was proposing to the countries of the South that they leave their efforts to become self-sufficient in food production behind and save money by importing food produced by the United States. bit.ly/3RDAgdc
After 30 years of free trade, Mexico is dangerously dependent on U.S. agriculture to feed its population. Added to this are the drought that impacts commercial agriculture areas, the lack of resources for the promotion of production, and the erroneous agricultural policies of the previous six-year term that punished agriculture destined for the domestic market and destroyed the few financing, marketing and promotion programs that had survived neoliberal policies. As a result, basic grains production in 2024 was the lowest in the last 10 years.
Without any sort of assessment, the disintegrated and ineffective programs that operated during López Obrador’s term were included in the Constitution and absorb most of the resources for the rural sector.
In this scenario constrained by the climate crisis, the economy and politics, President Sheinbaum proposes to expand food self-sufficiency, increasing the production of white corn, beans, rice, and milk, based on a new program Cosechando Soberanía (Harvesting Sovereignty), which will be aimed in 2025 only at 300 thousand individual, small and medium producers, of up to 5 hectares of irrigated and 20 of rainfed land, and will reach 750 thousand producers in 2030. Farmers will be able to access, among other supports, soft credit rates and production and price insurance, but it will benefit only 6.5 percent of producers in 2025, and 16 percent in 2030. Programs of this type, like Sembrando Vida, lead only to greater inequality in the countryside.
The program distinguishes white corn for food from yellow corn for feed and commits to maintaining self-sufficiency in white corn at a time when imports of yellow corn will reach unprecedented levels. Unlike its predecessor, the current government does not propose to increase yellow corn production in order to guarantee supply to cattle ranchers and industrializers, many of them transnationals. bit.ly/4d04Mrp
The government proposes that white corn production reach 21.3 million tons this year, by increasing production by 440 thousand tons, and by 2030, it will reach 25 million tons, with an increase of 3.6 million tons.
During 2024, only 20.9 million tons of white corn were produced due to a sharp drop of 3.7 million tons during the autumn-winter cycle, mainly in Sinaloa, where less than half of the hectares were planted compared to the previous year, due to lack of water and due to the disaster suffered by farmers in the marketing of their harvest in 2023. Between 2023 and 2024, 3.7 million tons of white corn were lost, which the government intends to recover by the end of 2030.
The additional tons will be cultivated in different quantities in each of the southern and southeastern states chosen for their water supply: Chiapas, Veracruz, Campeche, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Tabasco, Yucatán and Morelos.
At the same time, the government is trying to stabilize production in the cereal-producing regions by promoting irrigation technology to mitigate the ravages caused by drought.
Proposing to shift part of the grain production from the northwest and Bajío to the south and southeast may cause strong economic and social conflicts in regions where agriculture makes a substantial economic contribution.
The Cosechando Soberanía program cannot solve the serious structural problems faced by the rest of the agricultural sector, without financing, credit or insurance; without marketing systems or institutions; without regulation or promotion of production. So one risk is that, even if the program’s goals are met, production in the corn-growing states will decline and the country will increase its dependence.
The proposal to link corn production to the manufacture of flour, from state processing plants and its sale in the Welfare Stores, with the participation of farmers, will only support 48,500 producers this year and in 2030 will include 62,500 farmers. Unfortunately, this program will not change the crisis situation in the countryside.
*Director of the Center for the Study of Change in the Mexican Countryside.
Original text by Ana de Ita published in La Jornada on April 27th, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.