From Xico

Foreign Policy In Focus | Going Beyond Immigration Policy

Democratic Party leaders recently introduced their latest proposal to reform U.S. immigration policy. The proposal, which is given little chance of passage in a polarized election year, offers carrots and sticks in an attempt to bring some semblance of order to a broken and outdated policy that has left nearly 12 million people in the United States without legal documents.

read the whole thing via www.fpif.org

Important documentation on the need to reform big agriculture that is a root cause of much illegal immigration.

Invasion of the Superweeds - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

From todays NY Times:

American farmers’ broad use of the weedkiller glyphosphate — particularly Roundup, which was originally made by Monsanto — has led to the rapid growth in recent years of herbicide-resistant weeds. To fight them, farmers are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.

via roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com

Mexico, Beware Monsanto!

Mexico, US, High Fructose Corn Syrup and Sugar

The article on corn syrup addresses growing consumer hostility in the US to corn syrup.  Corn syrup, aside from making people too fat, is made from subsidized US corn.  I'm not a fan of the sugar cane industry, but, boy oh boy, Mexico gets shafted again. Read the article:

For High-Fructose Corn Syrup, Sweet Talk Gets Harder - NYTimes.com

And at the end of the article, this appears:

This makes [US] consumers even more confused than before,” Dr. Fernstrom says. “I worry that it’s a license to overconsume unhealthy products.”

No one is more infuriated about sugar’s new-and-improved profile than Ms. Erickson. “A sugar is a sugar, and that’s what we need to get people to understand,” she says.

"One place where that thinking seems to prevail is Mexico. Mr. Mills of Credit Suisse says that A.D.M., Tate & Lyle and Corn Products International all have had big sales increases of high-fructose corn syrup in Mexico, largely offsetting their United States declines.

In a reversal, manufacturers are replacing the sugar in Mexican soda and other beverages with the less-expensive high-fructose corn syrup. In Mexico this year, consumption of the sweetener is expected to be up by a whopping 50 percent, according to the United States Department of Agriculture."

What can I say? 'Poor Mexico! So near the US, so far from God.'

A Local Mexican Response to Big Agriculture: Palm Oil NO in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz

Palm oil from African palm plantations that are spreading through Latin America is big business and a growing headache. Really, we are all at the mercy of megacorporations which have their tentacles everywere.

BUT in Mexico, some farmers have rebelled.*

According to an article in La Jornada-Veracruz, campesinos are destroying palm oil trees in Veracruz because of low prices.  They prefer to plant maize, citric plants, beans and papaya.

Below you can find my translation of the article.

Coatacoalcos, VER.  Producers in four municipalities in southeastern Veracruz are cutting down their oil palm plants in order to return to traditional crops since the price of oil palm is very low.  The large plantations of palm oil in the municipalities of Jáltipan, Chinameca, Oteapan and Mecayapan are being converted back to [traditional crops], since producrs have not seen any benefit to maintaining oil palm plantations.

Since 1996, the oil palm has been the object of a very ambitious  (Mexican) federal program, and since 2003, a method of sustainable development for the oil palm has been sought, but national prices have not risen.  Although palm oil is one of the products for which demand has grown internationally, this hasn't translated into benefits for campesinos in the region who continue to fight poverty and marginalization.

In the mountainous zone of Santa Martha the producers are fighting to subsist with what they get from their sales[of oil palm products], but it doesn't compensate for what they invested to maintain this plant.  Although a processing plant for oil palm was established in the zone, the price which the product is bought [from the local producers] is 1200 to 1500 pesos a ton while the international price is fixed at US$793 [9650 pesos] a ton.**  

Esteban Valles Martínez, coordiator of the producers of southern Veracruz indicated that these hardly competitve prices are obliging many families to return to more profitable crops.  He revealed that in these four municipalities the producers are kocking down the palm trees to cultivate maize, beans, papaya and some citrus.

The leader of the palm oil producers indicted that the federal goernment also should have a price stabililzation policy for some agricultural products, since many of them are sold at a low price to national industries and then resold  at double or triple the price.... 

At present palm oil is the second most consumed oil in the world and is used as a cooking oil and for manufacting bakery products, cakes, candies, ice cream, salsa, frozen and dehydrated meals and for creamers without dairy products for coffee.

******

Supposedly in an effort to convert coca plants to a non-narcotic crop, African oil palms have been planted on large farms in Colombia, not only for the products mentioned above, but as a biofuel.  This has backfired in several ways.  For one thing, instead of helping campesinos, it has seriously hurt them and their land.  It is linked to right-wing paramilitary groups and narcos. [See this Guardian Article and this article from CIP Americas Program.]Furthermore, at present, Colombian palms are being destroyed by disease which is turning into "a technological disaster, an economic disaster and a social disaster, according to the superintendent of one of the plantations [ see this LA Times article].

*Naturally, this kind of news doesn't make the NY Times because that paper doesn't seem to have a clue about the problems of agroindustry or much else in Mexico.  Today Tom Friedman decided to opine on Mexican economics.  He personifies the ignorance prevailig at the Times.  Would someone please take him by the hand and teach him something real?

** A situation similar to coffee wherein the producers are at the low end of the pay scale.

Coffee, Coffee Growers and Monsanto, too

Today an interesting juxtaposition of two articles which appeared in La Alta Voz, the local weekly which covers Coatepec, Teocelo, Xico and some other nearby towns.  This has to do with coffee farmers and farms.  

The first, by Omar Madrigal:

Coffee Farmers Demonstrate in Plaza Lerdo [Plaza Lerdo is the central park/square of Coatepec, right in front of the City Hall.]

This past April 12, around 1500 coffee farmers from the areas of Xico, Cosautlán, Emiliano Zapata, Teocelo, Xalapa, Tepetlán, Pinoltepec, El Haya and municipios in the region of Huatusco gathered to renew their recognition of Emiliano Zapata as the gretest spirutual guide in the fight of campesinos, today not to gain the land, but to gain better conditions for production.

....

Among the eight demands ... of the producers...we wil mention two here which were presented as urgent:

    1. The immediate delivery of resources from the Program for the Productive Promotion of Coffee for 2010.

    2. That the state government distribute in an urgent manner the fertilliers which have to be used in this production cycle.

Both demands are due to the necessity of beginning the work of cultivating the coffee fields now so that they give better fruit in the present cycle. ...

[There were some claims that the demonstrators lacked their leaders by the government representatives which were resolved but which led to delays, and then the government representatives said they couldn't themselves do anything, but would have to forward the demands.]

Finally, [it was resolved] that both demands would be met by April 30 or the coffee growers' organization would block highways and important streets in Xalapa as a way of pressing for action.

Guajolotes and Eating Meat

I think I mentioned that we went to Doña J's birthday party last Monday. We had chivo, which is goat, and guajolote en mole.  The goat, Don A told us, is a specialty of Monterrey.  It was baby goat.  I couldn't eat more than a bite -- I'm just an old softy: I can't bring myself to eat lamb or veal eithr -- but Jim ate it and liked it.  the guajolote (the j is pronounced like the "ch" in challah, like in Yiddish, the final "e" is also pronounced) was from Doña J's poultry flock which runs around in an ample yard at the side of the house.  The mole was from Hidalgo, the state just north and west of Veracruz.  It was quite different from what we get here.  It was quite savory, not at all sweet, and made with squash seeds (pipián) that made it crunchy and gave it a very good nutty flavor.  

Guajolote as you may remember is turkey. It is a Nahuatl word, prehispanic. It appears there is another word, too: hueyxolotl, which means big monster, also in Nahuatl.  The Spanish word for turkey is pavo. Mexicans domesticated the turkey.more than a thousand years ago.  Turkey was brought from Mexico to Europe in 1511 where it evolved with human assistance partway towards what we have today in US supermarkets.  THOSE turkeys, the ones USAers buy around Thanksgiving and Christmas I hear are so overfed that they can barely stand up. Some of these are bred in Mexico for sale to the US.  I learned that the Latin for guajolote is Meleagris gallopavo on a blog post about guajolotes written by someone involved in agriculture called El campo es vida [agropecuario]. Unfortunately, the "about me" [Mas de mi] link was nonfunctional, so I couldn't find out anything about the author.

In our neck of the woods, guajolotes still resemble their ancestors.  I was sure I had a picture -- more than one -- of a guajolote, but it was taking me too long to rummage through my somewhat chaotic photo archives, so I took one from Wikipedia.There are lots around here.  When we walk across the little river in the rural ejido land which surrounds us, we pass a small homestead with guajolotes mingling with the chickens.  Sometimes we see them in the colonia, too, but not so often because, I imagine, since they are bigger than chickens, they need more space.  What people around here call guajolotes look kind of like turkeys, but not really. I think they must still be close to the wild guajolotes.  Here is a picture from wikipedia of a wild guajolote:

 

Here is an engraving by an artist named  Josefa García which looks more like what I'm accustomed to seeing around here:

I've now eating guajolote twice, both times a drumstick.  The bone is long and thick, the meat dark, smooth and very good.  Not fat like a US drumstick.

I like guajolote a lot better than baby goat though I still am too citified to want to think about eating a creature that was just that morning happily running around with the chickens next to the house I'm eating it in.  Yesterday Roger Cohen wrote a column in the NY Times talking about the Chinese eating dogs, and an effort in China to ban this.  How silly, Cohen thought.  It's all really how we are brought up.  It was an interesting column.  These days, I vary between having a hard time eating meat at all and feeling that eating meat is just part of the chain of existence.  I probably won't be eaten by other people, but I will be eaten by bugs and worms and swallowed into the earth unless I am too well preserved, which I hope I'm not. On the other hand, I cannot eat meat from animals raised in hideously confining conditions as if they had no feelings, condemned to terrible, short lives before they are consumed.

"Why Big Agriculture Won't Feed the World

One of the best concise summaries of the glaring problems of thinking that industrial agriculture a. should feed the world and b. can feed the world is here in the Atlantic Monthly's food blog.  It is important to note, as the article points out, that we already can feed a population the size of that predicted in 2050.  I myself would question that this prediction will come true.

I have a lot more to say (I always do) but no time at the moment.  EXCEPT to add that industrial agriculture has little more to do with sustaining human life than creating feed for anonymous units with the labor of anonymous units, be they human or machine.

Technology has done some wondrous things.  Now we need wisdom to control it.

If you want a healthy diet, move to Mexico

Yesterday in the New York Times, a post on Well, the health blog of the Times written by Tara Parker-Pope reappeared.  It had first shown up in June and turned out to be one of the ten-most-read articles of 2009.  It is a list of "the eleven best foods you aren't eating.  They are:

1.  Beets
2. Cabbage
3. Swiss chard
4. cinnamon
5. pomegranate juice
6. dried plums
7. pumpkin seeds
8. sardines
9.  turmeric
10. frozen blueberries
11. canned pumpkin  

Tara Parker-Pope says she ony has two of these foods in her house: pumpkin seeds and frozen blueberries.  She to an article in Men's Health which she says is the orig of fthe list.  Here you find not 11 but 10, with a little variation.  For instance, canned pumpkin, frozen blueberries and sardines are not listed.  Purslane and goji berries (whatever they are) are.

Much of the stuff on these lists is standard fare where we live.  All the produce is available in the little local market in our community. Pumpkin seeds (or the equivalent) are scooped out of a barrel in whatever amount you want in the little tienda across the street.  They are a favorite munchy. Cinnamon is sold in long sticks. People buy sardines in large cans in tomato sauce and cook them. Purslane, which is on the Men's Health listgrows wild and is also sold to people witout th good fortune to have a yard. Turmeric comes in root form, and I have some in my yard.  Costco (and I suspect the fancier supermarkets) sells both frozen and dried blueberries but they are ridiculously expensive.  I wouldn't dream of buying them except occasionally for special occasions. Anyway, I still have memories of gathering wild blueberries in the mountains in Maine with friends and feeling almost drunk on their sweetness.  Dried and frozen don't cut it.

I mention all this because Before Junk Food, people here had really good diets.  As I've mentioned, masa eaten with beans (masa is what corn tortillas are made of and tamales, too) makes a complete protein.  The variety of fruits is extraordinary. One season's abundance passes only to be replaced by another.

Soda is way too prevailant, as I've harped on before, but when you eat in local restaurants and by the comida corrida -- the daily special --, you always get a pitcher of an agua made with fresh fruit.

It is really really sad that sometimes junk food is cheaper than this good local stuff and that it has that addictive quality.  I myself cannot leave alone potato chips and packaged cookies, among too many other things, if they are in the house, which they are for parties.   I know my neighbors struggle with their kids who want junk.  Sometimes they are poor enough not to be able to afford it and sufficiently okay to be able to give them the good stuff.  I think archaeologists and historians confirm the goodness of the diet. I know we eat a lot better here than we did in the US.  This morning I had for breakfast hand-made corn tortillas spread with avocado, topped with scrambled egg and hot sauce. 

People here forage for food, too.  Recently we've seen people collecting what I think are analogous to crayfish in local streams.  They pick greens on the hillsides around us, including purslane, as well as an abundance of fruit.  Our neighbor and her family go up into the hills regularly with their dogs and come back with loaded baskets.

I was kind of leery at first, when Guillermo our gardener pointed out stuff we could eat that looked like weeds. It takes me a while to figure out what to do with them.  And it's funny to realize my squeamishness, mostly related to the fear that some mysterious part of the plant that I don't see might be poisonous.  But I'm getting better at trying stuff.  

Why Is Mexico in Such a Mess? Neoliberal Economics and NAFTA

I wake up around 7 every morning, in time, on clear days, to watch blue strengthen and wash away the gray of dawn. Fhe sun land in sparkles on trees outside our windows.  As I've said, from our windows we see a lush place, brilliant colors against a rich, deep-green carpet. 

To the side and back of our house, beyond  our wall, the mostly small houses of wood or concrete, line the streets around a raggedy park.  Most of the people here are not poor in the sense of a bureaucrat's definition of poor, most I would say are no more unhappy than the same number of people in a working class neighborhood in the US would be, though they clearly have less: less healthcare, less education (though that is open to discussion), less stuff, including stuff like dishwashers and refrigerators and electric stoves.  Like people in the US, they are probably more anxious than they used to be, but they are more worried than Americans (who are indeed also more worried than they used to be) because of La Crisis. As Mexicans, they live in the country in the hemisphere most affected by the recession in the US, one that appears to be slipping faster in health care, education and poverty. In addition to decline, inflation continues, so prices are going up at the same time people have less money. [Here is a link to a brief summary of Mexico's overall economic status. Here is a link to poverty and standard of living projections.] You may remember reading on this blog about our neighbor's son's health problems.  I can add now that Juan Pablo had an asthmatic crisis. He was admitted to the seguro popular hospital in Coatepec for treatment overnight. They were not charged for that, but his family could not pay for the prescribed inhalation therapy at discharge.  We paid for it.  It cost about $50.00.  You can imagine how many people there are in the informal economy with kids with asthma and other conditions who simply cannot afford treatment now. And everywhere, there are people trying to sell bits of things on busy highways and street corners.  Kids who used to juggle for pesos are now blowing fire from mouthfuls of gasoline.  We saw an indigenous woman, her baby tied on her back, trying to get some cash by trying hard (and not succeeding) to juggle two balls.

La Crisis  has grim consequences in Mexico.  For a detailed look at the numbers, you can look at this analysis.  But La Crisis as it is called here is does not mark a huge shift from prosperity to despair but rather big dip at the end of a long slide which began, for ordinary people, even before NAFTA when the Mexican government decided to go for an orthodox neoliberal approach to economic development a la the Washington Consensus. * This meant the elimination of government subsidies, taxes, tariffs, planning, etc. which were meant to help local economic development in favor of throwing development into the winds of free markets which Mexico did with much more fervor than did the US where farm subsidies still reign. It would have been so much better all around if the US and Canada had approached NAFTA as the wealthier European countries approached the creation of the European Union.  They supported infrastructure and other development which gave Portugal and Spain and other countries a leg up so they could actually benefit from membership in the European Union.  Mexico was comparable to Portugal at one point in the not too distant past.

An outstanding analysis of Mexico's situation  is presented in Rethinking Trade Policy for Development: Lessons from Mexico under NAFTA written by Eduardo Zepeda, Timothy Wise and Kevin Gallagher under the auspices of The Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University.  I have butchered it, probably, in my efforts to try to present the highlights below in note form.  I hope the authors, should they ever come across this post, forgive me both for the butchering and for the sometimes direct quotes that creep in without being identified by quotation marks.

Here is why Mexico went the Washington Consensus route:

• Lack of interest in Mexico on the part of Europe.
• Special interests in both countries were dominant and stood to gain.
• Strategic issues.
• Ideological commitment to Washington Consensus by US-trained Mexican politicos and economists.

NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, entrenched and hardened this approach.

Of course not all of Mexico's problems can be attributed to NAFTA, but a review of NAFTA's effects reveals that it has underlain many of the economic, social and environmental problems of recent years.  My interests are primarily in the effects on agriculture, employment/social issues/immigration and the environment, but in this post, I look at the bigger picture.  

Here are what the purported benefits were to be:

• Access to "huge" US markets.
• Dramatic expansion of exports and increasing manufacturing.

This was to lead to growing employment in Mexico and a consequent improvement in the economy and a decrease in migration to the US.

Here is what actually happened:

Overall economic growth did not happen. Gains in one area were wiped out by losses in others.

• Free-market policies were locked into place which caused more problems than they solved.
• These policies could not be reversed because of NAFTA rules.
• Mexico eliminated agricultural subsidies but the US did not.

When people say that NAFTA has been a success, this is what they are looking at:

• Growth of exports between 1993 and 2007 of 311%.
• Growth of non-oil exports of 283%
• Growth of exports to US of around 280%
• Manufacturing exports grew from 43% of total exports in 1993 to 77% in 2007.
• Agricultural exports doubled in the same time frame.
• Foreign Direct Investment more than tripled from 1992-2006, with 58% coming from the US.
• Efforts to establish macroeconomic stability through tightening of fiscal, monetary policies a success. 
• Productivity/efficiency gains of about 80%.

HOWEVER, the inherent assumption that the achievements listed above would automatically lead to dynamic economic growth and that this would translate into improved standards of living proved to be FALSE.

Assumptions of standard economic theory:

• Opening of the economy leads to increased trade and foreign investment.
• Demand for exports will fuel growth.
• Reduced protectionism will permit Mexico to find true comparative advantage.
• Foreign investment will stimulate economic growth and increase productivity.
• Domestic firms will benefit from the above.
• Employment and wages will increase.
• Country will enter a period of dynamic growth.

BUT in spite of faithful adherence to the principles of neoliberal economic policy, this is what happened between 1994 and 2007 with NAFTA in effect:

• Sluggish economic growth
• Low level of investment
• Vulnerability to macroeconomic shocks remained high because of 
• • fiscal dependence on oil revenues
  • Reliance on overvalued currency
• Job creation was limited even in growth sectors.
• Competition from imports eliminated many jobs, especially in agriculture (remember, the US continued subsidies to farmers)
• Wages remained low and fell further behind the US.
• Although poverty decreased, inequality remained high.
• Ecological costs of economic growth were high.

Let's look at this further.

Sluggish economic growth:

• Mexico's economy grew at a annually at a per capita rate of only 1.6% between 1992-2007, only half the growth rate of the years between 1960-1979.
• • Low rate by developing country standards.
  • One of the lowest growth rates in all of Latin America.
  • Countries that refused to follow "orthodox" trade and development policies such as those demanded by NAFTA grew much faster.  These countries include Brazil, China and India.
  • Mexico emphasized deficit reduction whereas Brazil, India and China emphasized pro-growth policies with high levels of public investment to maximize growth-stimulus of expanding trade.  They did the OPPOSITE of Mexico whom the US praised mightily for its orthodox neoliberal fiscal policies.
  • Rapid growth of imports diminished impact of exports. 
  • Mexico's exports often used imported components which minimized the value of those exports.
  • NAFTA preferences given to Mexico have been eroded by US trade agreements with other countries.
  • CHINA has moved ahead of Mexico as exporter to the US.
  • It is estimated that over half of Mexican exports are threatened by Chinese exports. 
  • Manufacturing trade between Mexico and US declining in importance since 2001.
  • Current economic crisis has erased any significant advantage from NAFTA.  The recession has particularly hit the automobile industry in Mexico.
• Low levels of investment in Mexico -- Neoliberal doctrine for foreign direct investment (FDI) assumes an automatic virtuous cycle: FDI brings capital and technology which raises productivity and increases efficiency resulting in spillover effects in domestic economy and thus more foreign firms buying their stuff from domestic companies thus stimulating further growth.
• • NAFTA has not translated into increasing overall investment rates in Mexico.  
  • Money has been going to CHINA instead.
  • Poor infrastructure, lack of credit caused many domestic firms to go out of business due to pressure from imports.  (THIS is what a European Union approach and a less rigid monetary policy might have at least minimized)
  • Foreign investors bought domestic firms rather than establishing new facilities (Wal-Mart buying Superama, for instance)
  • Foreign Direct Investment in manufacturing has been concentrated in operations like Maquiladoras which add little domestic value.  That is, these companies use imported rather than domestic parts so little is bought in Mexico.
  • Mexican firms have had difficulty linking with foreign companies to stimulate local economies.
  • Efforts to reduce the deficit (tight monetary policy) led to collapse of public investment.
  • Mexico strictly adhered to NAFTA (many things China does are illegal under NAFTA) and this model failed to lead into increased investment.
  • NAFTA prohibited practices effective in converting foreign investment into domestic activity.

Macroeconomic vulnerability

• Tight fiscal policies have slowed domestic economic growth.
• Tight monetar policies have led to overvalued currency.  This means, I think, that Mexican products are expensive vis-a-vis other countries' products.
• Financial services sector is weak.
• Not much bank lending to private firms compared to international practices, at least before the crisis.
• Problems because of oil.
• • Oil masks true trade deficit.
  • Oil revenues supplement what in other countries would be provided by taxes.
  • Oil revenues go to support the government instead of taking care of oil production issues.
• Mexico is way too tied to US.  More vulnerable to US downturns than other Latin American countries because of US as its market and because of dependence on remittances from Mexicans in US, down in this crisis.

Weak job growth

• Only small games in manufacturing ad service sectors, large losses in agriculture.
• Mexico's no-maquiladora section had less employment in 2008 than in 1994 except in the informal economy. Of course the number of jobs in the informal economy which offers nothing in the way of protections and benefits, etc. always grows in downturns.
• Jobs in both the maquiladora and non-maqiladora sectors have been declining since 2000-2001.
• Increased productivity has reduced the number of jobs.  There are few new plants (sounds like the US).
• Jobs have increased in: business, financial services; tourism (until this year); malls and supermarkets, education. Has obviously been downturn this year.
• Jobs have been lost in agriculture to such an extent that they have taken away gains in other areas.  Employment has fallen s significantly from 190 through the second quarter of 2008.

Consequences of Mexico's unilateral liberalization --ahead of NAFTA schedules. 

• Imports of US-subsidized grains and oilseeds have surpassed Mexican non-subsidized produce exports to the US.  Mexico's products now are not subsidized.
• US INCREASED farm subsidies as Mexico reduced them, further burdening Mexican farming.
• Mexico's trade balance in agricultural goods with the US has remained negative SINCE NAFTA:
• Little (if any) employment increase in export crops.  These crops are grown mostly in industrialized fashion which means FEWER jobs than traditional agriculture produces.
• Seasonal only agricultural practices have increased drawing internal migrants. These practices also diminish the jobs formerly available in traditional forms of agriculture.
• Great losses among small-scale farmers producing staples...especially and very significantly corn which had been classified as a "sensitive product," meaning not subject to the rapid removal of subsidies.  AND Mexico removed its subsidies ahead of schedule.  CORN is a huge issue and I will talk about it soon (as I am fond of saying).
• INFORMAL employment in 2004 57% of the economically active population vs. 52% in 1992.  NOT the direction it was supposed to go in. It has obviously worsened this year. 

Continuing low wages

• In the face of a big growth in productivity, wages have remained stagnant or only risen slightly.
• NAFTA was supposed to lift wages for Mexico, but instead, they have fallen further behind US levels.  In 1993, average wages for manufacturing workers in the US was 5.6 times the Mexican wage.  In 2007, it was 5.8 times the Mexican wages.  Agricultural wages are LOWER than they were pre-NAFTA.
• Minimum wages in Mexico has FALLEN 25% since NAFTA.
• Benefits have declined since NAFTA.  In the formal sector, half of post-NAFTA formal economy jobs have not offered basic benefits even though required by law.
• Low-wage policies were set to attract foreign investment, but CHINA's low wage policy means even lower wages than in Mexico.  Low wages have not brought Mexico more jobs.

Persistent poverty and inequality

• Poverty was reduced from 1992 to 2006, from 53% to 43%.  Extreme poverty fell from 21% to 14%.  The introduction of the program Oportunidades  helped considerably in this.
• BUT in 2008, poverty increased to over 50%. 2009 promises to be even worse, with estimates of a rate of 53+%.
• Rural poverty in 2006 was at 55% with 25% in extreme poverty.  Extreme poverty means not being able to get enough to eat.
• Poverty rates are high for what has been a middle-income contry.
• Poverty is worse in southern than in northern Mexico.  NAFTA contributed to this geographical inequality.

Migration during NAFTA

• Migration has increased dramatically during NAFTA for reasons discernible in the above data.
• Militarization of the border has increased the number of migrants who stay in the US from fear of the border crossing.
• The country has grown dependent on remittances from the US which have declined significantly during the present crisis.

Environmental costs of NAFTA

• NAFTA has weakened Mexico's commitment to environmental protection.
• Restructuring of agriculture to an agro-industrial model has resulted in increase water use, especially in export sectors in water-stressed regions.  You can see this when you drive through the desert and near-desert areas of northern Mexico: huge fields abloom through irrigation which draws from non-renewable water tables.
• Agroindustry has led to soil being loaded with nitrogen and other agrochemicals.
• Industrial raising of animals has led to significant water and soil pollution.
• Economic pressures on poor farmers, particularly maize farmers, has contributed to loss of maize biodiversity.
• Deforestation from unsustainable exploitation of marginal lands has occurred as poor farmers have pursued survival strategies.

The authors of Rethinking Trade Policy for Development: Lessons from Mexico under NAFTA conclude:

• THe Mexican economic model, which hinged significantly on strict adherence to free-market policies backed by a trade agreement wit the US and Canada (NAFTA) has largely been a disappointment for Mexico.
• It is in both the short- and log-run interests of the US to develop trading relations with less-developed partners that stimulate those partners' economic development.
• Mexico's key mistakes:
• • 
    Overemphasis on tight fiscal policy instead of exchange rate competitiveness and economic growth.
  • Weak tax collection.
  • Falling public investment.
  • Abandonment of public investment and research in oil and other industries.
  • Failure to develop government-led programs to correct for critical failures in credit markets. 
• What to avoid in trade agreements with the US:
• • Avoid NAFTA's prohibitions on policies for industrial competitiveness which favor the US such as selective promotion of industries, temporary preferences to national entrepreneurs in particular areas, etc.
  • Avoid conditions which prevent the government from being a strategic partner in economic development.  The Mexican government needs to be a strategic partner to help steer and to stimulate dynamic domestic activities. NAFTA's limits on such policies meant that growth in exports and foreign investments could not be channeled into areas that could yield long-term benefits to the Mexican economy.
  • AVOID liberalization of sensitive food-producing sectors.  IF this is done at all, it should be well-coordinated with employment-creating reforms and with continued investments in rural development and agriculture productivity.  
  • AVOID being victimized by highly subsidized US agriculture.  EMPLOY tariffs, quotas, voluntary export restraints and whatever other means are necessary so that Mexican agriculture is not crushed in this highly unequal situation.
• What to insist on in future agreements:
• • 
    Benchmark standards for labor and the environment.
  • Provisions which include funding for development to bring Mexico to a position where it could realistically compete with the US and Canada.
• MEXICO should NOT look to trade agreements to provide a coherent national economic development strategy.  THEY WON'T.  Countries that have succeeded in recent years have not only resisted the limitations imposed by NAFTA-style trade agreements, they have generated and followed active and coherent economic development policies to ensure that there are domestic benefits from expanding trade.    

*Just in case I have some readers stuck in the past, I am not about to launch into a socialism vs. capitalism diatribe.  Things are way too complicated for any such simplistic approach.

    

Transgenics Threaten to Trample Food Sovereignty in Mexico

The efforts of Monsanto to plant transgenic maize in Mexico continue in the news.  Monsanto won't be able to fade into the woodwork and silently go about its business.  Today in Enlaces Veracruz 212, the following appeared (my translation -- the awkwardness is totally mea culpa).  This is, I probably don't need to remind you, in Veracruz, not the states in the north and northwest where the experimental plots are supposed to be created.

By Benigno Montes de Oca M./Acayucan, Ver.

"Mexican officials authorized the transnational company Monsanto to cultivate in an experimental manner genetically modified maize in national territory, this in spite of the innumerable voices of protests and alerts which scientists, ecologists, campesinos, artists and citizens in general have raised.

"The organization Greenpeace staged an unusal demostration in the country's capital, giving in a symbolic manner, voice to national heroes.  On October 18  the column of the Angel of Independence was draped in a banner that read: "Maíz transgénico: fin de la independencia [Transgenic maize: end of independence]."  [The Angel of Independence monument, one of the most famous icons of Mexico City and Mexico itself, also has statues of national heroes, and they, too, were robed. below is a picture, sans banner.] Meanwhile, the statue of the father of the country, Miguel Hidalgo, had a banner reading, "The evil government which authorizes transgenics will die."

 

"According to what Aleira Llara, Coodinator of the Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture and Transgenics of Greenpeace said to Forum, represented by Nelly Olivos [who said (?)-- this is a phrase I'm having trouble with.  It reads in Spanish: "De acuerdo a lo expresado por, Aleira Lara, coordinadora de la Campaña de Agricultura Sustentable y Transgénicos de Greenpeace a Forum, representado por Nelly Olivos." Please help.  This doesn't seem like a complete sentence to me.]

"Even when permits are approved, one ought to "to join in an appeal demanding review the in accordance with the Law of Biosecurity of Genetically Modified Organisms (LBOGM).  We have identified various irregularities in the approval of these applications.  Furthermore, the modification of the LBOGM and its rules, in March of 2009, was done in an illegal manner.  

"According to the activist, the permits recently awarded to Monsanto violate Article 2, Section 11 of the aforementoned law, which establishes a special system of protection of maize owing to the fact that our country is the center of origin of this crop.

"The LBOGM says that in determining the centers of origin and of genetic diversity it should be taken into account that, in the case of cultivars, "the geographic regions in which the organism (maize) was domesticated,  should remain centers of genetic diversity. 

"In a warning directed at Felipe Calderón on the 29th of September this year, the Union of Scientists Committed to Society argued:

"'Mexico encompassses the centers of origin, domestication and diversification of maize, and for this reason, it harbors the largest part of maize's genetic diversity in the world, and is, in addition, home to all the known wild ancestors....Farmers in diverse agricultural systems of the distinct regions of Mexico depend on a reserve of seeds which they keep from one farming season to another, while they frequently exchange seeds with other producers inside and outside of each community.  These activities are at the heart of a dynamic system which guarantees the production and continuity of the genetic diversity of maize.'"

"This is a system which is at risk owing to the transgenic contamination which has been detected for some years in our country.  Before March of this year, the sowing of transgenics was not permitted, but in spite of the fact that it was illegal to plant transgenics in Mexico, already various cases of contamination have been documented in laboratory studies.

"The cases in which the transgenes were recorded in maize varieties and documented in corresponding studies are the following: Sierra Juárez, Oaxaca (2000, 2002-2004); in the conservation area of Mexico DF (2003) and in regions of the states of Guanajuato, Veracruz and Yucatán (2002).

"In the cases of contamination detected in Yucatán, Guanajuato, and Oaxaca, it was observed that the source of contamination was a government program called "Kilo por Kilo."  Regarding a program of the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (Sagarpa) which operated between 1996 and 2001, the Greenpeace activist indicated that "this type of maize [used in the program] isn't monitored nor does it have laboratory tests which  rule out the presence of transgenics."

"TO WHAT INTERESTS IS THE GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO RESPONDING?

"This is the question that the Network in Defense of Native Maize is asking in its Bulletin 0910, published the 19th of October following the authorization of the experimental planting of genetically modified maize.  Made up of 600 non-governmental organizations, the network predicts that with these authorizations, the production of maize is being surrendered to corporations, putting in danger the independence and capacity of the country to produce its own food, and risking our diet by submitting our basic food to a technology which poses serious threats to human health."

"Furthermore, it [the Network] answers the question framed above: the government does not respond to the interests of the people and of the nation.

"We would have to ask the relevant authorities if the interests to which they are responding are those of Monsanto, the company that leads in the production of genetically modified seed. Lara noted that this company holds 90 percent of the patents on transgenic seeds in the world and the approval of Monsanto's cultivation of this type of maize, would signify a major dependency on this transnational which seeks to control via monopoly [the production of] maize.

"Aleira Lara added that 'lamentably in those countries where they have begun to cultivate this type of seed, they have displaced production destined for national consumption with production on a grand scale, that is to say, there is a reconfiguration of production so that it is destined for export or for the production of biocombustibles instead of local consumption thus signifying the dismantelling of food sovereignty for the people.'

WMonsanto has made demands on farmers across the world whose fields have been contaminated with its patented seeds .  On Monsanto's web page in Mexico (www.monsanto.com.mx) you can read the following justification for this legal activity:

"'Monsanto patents many varieties of seeds which it develops.  The patents are necessary to assure that we receive payment for our products and for all the investment we make to develop these products.....When farmers buy a variety of patented seed, they sign a contract in which they agree that they will cultivate only the seed they are buying from us and that they will not save seeds nor plant the seeds which the plants cultivated from our [patented] seeds produce....A very small number of farmers do not respect this agreement.  Monsanto knows, through the actions of our business or through third parties who those people are who are suspected of , our patents and our agreements.  In the cases in which we encounter violations, we may fight the majority of cases without going through the courts.'

"In the text cited above, Monsanto signals, basically, three arguments for demanding restitution from campesinos who supposedly use Monsanto's patented seeds: 1) to obtain remuneration from the products generated, 2) to prevent the loss of these remunerations because such losses would not permit invesment in investigation and development and 3) to rectify the injustice caused by those who do not pay for the seeds enjoying their fruits. [My comment: Monsanto has hounded farmers in whose fields they find transgenics which were probably brought in by the wind] 

"CONSUMER'S RIGHT TO INFORMATION VIOLATED

Around 10 million tons of yellow corn for forrage is entering Mexico from the United States. It is not known exactly what percentage of this grain is transgenic, but we do know that about 90 percent of the crops supposedly grow with conventional seeds in the US already are contaminated.  We do not know whether this maize is destined for animals or for human consumption.

"The LBOGM establishes in Article 101 that 'OGMS [genetically modified seeds] or products that contain genetically modified organisms authorized by the SSA [Secretariat of Health], although they are considered innocuous in terms of the law and may be consumed directly by humans, should have explicit reference made identifying organisms genetically modified.  Information should be provided on the nutritional label that identifies the composition of the food and its nutrient properties, in those cases in which these characteristics may be significantly different from conventional products.'"

"The point that is not respected by any of the concerned industries, as activist Lara points out is that 'in the products which derive from this type of transgenic maize, which in fact we are already importing, it is not specified on the label that these products are derived from genetically modified organisms. This is violating the right of consumers to know what they are consuming.  They are being denied the right to choose what they want to eat.  This brings us to another point, which is the impact these products can have on human health.  The industry has refused to list its products, because evidently when consumers aren't sure these products are not going to have an impact on human health, they are going to choose organic products and food produced conventionally [instead of food produced by transgenic seeds].'

"The argument that the genetically modified organisms will end the hunger that millions of people in the world suffer from is not credible, since 'hunger in the world is not a problem of the lack of food, but rather a problem of its bad distribution,'* says Aleira Lara who adds that the conclusion of a study in the US found that 'transgenic cutivation has not succeeded in producing a larger harvest than conventional cultivation, that we are talking about an increase of 2.3 percent which, if you translate it into terms of investment and economics, is not a significant increase since the technology of transgenics costs up to ten times more than conventional production.'

"The repercussions of the sowing of transgenic maize start with the disappearance of traditional cultivation practiced by small producers which can unleash a new wave of migration by campesinos; the disappearance of original species of maize and ecological repercussions; in addition to the economic consequences, since Monsanto seems to be prepared to initiate a new legal strategy to demand that the farmers who 'are abusing their good faith' used seeds without permission and corresponding payments.  In all, these consequences signify a blow to the food sovereignty of our country.

*In a December 2 post by Bill Niman and Nicolette Hahn Niman on the Atlantic Monthly food blog the authors cite a University of Arizona study concluding that about half the food in the US is never eaten and that the typical American household throws away almost $600 worth of food a year; that the Environmental Protection Agency claims that food waste is the single largest component (by weight) of American garbage and that the Department of Agriculture estimates that recovery of "just 25 percent of waste food would feed 20 million people."