Mexico lost the dispute panel that the United States requested against the presidential decree of February 13, 2023 within the framework of the T-MEC, which Canada joined. The decree establishes a ban on the use of genetically modified corn to make tortillas and dough, as well as its future substitution in all industrialized products for human consumption and animal feed.
According to the Secretary of Economy, Marcelo Ebrard, they have already given us the preliminary result for corn, the process is not yet finished, it will end in December (the 14th), but maybe they will beat us. The truth is that, unfortunately, what the official says is a euphemism. In fact, the cards are marked and Mexico will suffer a disaster. Beyond the propaganda that accompanied it, it was evident from the moment the presidential decree was made public that, apart from the good intentions to stop the expansion of Frankenstein corn here, the fight was lost. Ana de Ita analyzed this dispute with absolute crudeness and without illusion in her article Maíz transgénico y T-MEC (https://shorturl.at/Gl19v).
I am not happy about this outcome. Since June 2001, I have been trying to document in La Jornada the damage caused to peasant agriculture by these seeds (https://shorturl.at/mZvUu) and by the Biosafety Law on Genetically Modified Organisms (Lbogm) of 2004, known as the Monsanto Law (https://shorturl.at/ilfaR). However, anyone with a minimal knowledge of the rules of the T-MEC (and before that of NAFTA), which our country signed, amidst the rejoicing of the political class as a whole and the unwavering defense of free trade, could foresee that the blow was inevitable.
And it is, fundamentally, because it contravenes clauses of the T-MEC, which, whether we like it or not, are the legal framework with which the governments agreed to play. But also because of the enormous importance of corn production in the United States, the political weight of its farmers (and the amount of subsidies they receive), as well as the setbacks Mexico has had in increasing its corn crop.
Among other rules, the United States appealed to Chapter 9 of the T-MEC, dedicated to sanitary and phytosanitary measures, in which it can request scientific reasoning when the measure of another country restricts trade, or has the potential to do so, and the measure is not based on a relevant international standard, guideline or recommendation (https://shorturl.at/IQGy).
Demonstrating the harm caused by GM seeds is a battle of David versus Goliath . The large biotech companies have allocated considerable resources to finance studies showing the harmlessness of their genetic monsters, and to stigmatize the few serious investigations, carried out with very little funding, that demonstrate the damage they cause.
The U.S. is the world’s leading agricultural power and corn is a key agro-export product. It is the world’s leading producer of the grain, followed by China and Brazil. According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the grain harvest in 2023/2024 was 389 million 694 thousand tons. Its average yield is formidable: almost 11 and a half tons per hectare. It exported nearly 60 million tons, followed by Brazil and Argentina. In its map of geopolitical interests, food sales to other nations are not only trade, but a weapon of pressure and domination.
In the US, corn is mainly planted with genetically modified seeds. For them, it is not only food for human consumption. It is the raw material of a wide and diversified industrial chain. It serves as livestock feed, fuel input, the manufacture of high fructose sweeteners, alcohols, oils and snacks. The farmers who grow it and the large companies that market and process it are a very important political force with undoubted lobbying power in Washington.
All this means, in short, that the grain dispute with Mexico is not merely a commercial dispute. It is much more than that. It is a war of great proportions of powerful economic and political actors (from large farmers to biotechnology companies) to have indiscriminate access to the Mexican market, acting within the framework of a conflagration in which food exports are part of a strategic bet of the White House.
The effects of massive imports of transgenic corn from the US (but also from other countries) have left a deep mark among our consumers. A 2017 study by researchers from UAM and UNAM shows the presence of transgenes in more than 90 percent of tortillas analyzed. It also found that 82 percent of processed foods with industrial corn components were contaminated.
Despite having all the government policy instruments to do so, during the first six years of the 4T the government was unable to reverse the growing imports of yellow corn, nor the losses in harvested area (down 3.3 percent, from 7.15 million hectares in 2019 to 6.92 in 2023). During the first five years, production also decreased 1.9 percent. The guarantee price program had almost no impact. Food self-sufficiency remained a good intention.
Our agricultural model is subject to the dynamics of the T-MEC. Do we want to produce more corn? Do we want to avoid the invasion of biotech? It is not just a matter of laws or decrees. Without a change in the global trade rules and without another agricultural model that modifies the current one, there will be no way to do it.
Original text by Luís Hernandez Navarro in La Jornada on November 19th, 2025.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.