Biden Administration and Big Ag Pressure Mexico to Reverse GMO & Glyphosate Ban
MILLIONS AGAINST MONSANTO
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OCA has worked for years with our Mexican counterparts, Via Organica, Milliones Contra Monsanto (Millions Against Monsanto), Sin Maiz No Hay Pais (Without Corn There is No Country), and others to ban Monsanto/Bayer’s GMO corn and soybeans as well as the toxic herbicide, Roundup or glyphosate, which always accompanies these “herbicide-resistant” crops.
Nick Corbishly reports in Naked Capitalism:
“Mexico is not only dangerously dependent on US growers for its most important staple crop; it is growing more and more dependent by the year. Mexico’s government wants to reverse this dynamic, but the US has other ideas.
Mexico’s government recently unveiled plans to impose a temporary 50% export tax on white corn, a staple food in the country, which will remain in effect until at least June 30… Needless to say, the move did not go down well with the US government, which is threatening to sue Mexico’s government over its plans to phase out all imports of GMO crops, including corn, by the end of January 2024. Those plans were first set out in a presidential decree issued by Andrés Manuel López Obrador (aka AMLO) on Dec 31, 2020. The decree also pledges to prohibit use of the ‘probably‘ carcinogenic weedkiller glyphosate — the herbicide that commonly accompanies many GMO crops. The cultivation of GMO crops is already banned in Mexico.
In the words of the Non GMO Project, a Washington State-based non-profit, AMLO’s decree is ‘ambitious, controversial and well-worth defending.’ But it faces a towering wall of resistance, particularly from Big Ag lobbies in the United States.
The CEO of the US National Corn Growers Association, John Doggett, warned in November that AMLO’s decree would be ‘devastating’ both for the Mexican people, who will have to contend with much higher corn prices, and U.S. corn farmers, who will suddenly lose access to their largest overseas market. He also noted that GMO corn isn’t the only crop being targeted by Mexican officials: ‘Biotech soybeans, cotton and canola import approvals have also been rejected by Mexico’s regulatory agency over the past year.’
More than 92% of the corn grown in the States is GMO. Roughly a quarter of all the corn exported by the US goes to Mexico, where it is predominantly used for animal feed. As such, Mexico’s ban will undoubtedly hurt some US farmers.”