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from the middle October, peasant mobilizations have once again expressed themselves in different states and regions of the country. The actions carried out on November 24 by the National Front for the Rescue of the Countryside, the Peasant Agricultural Movement and the National Association of Transporters strangled and congested different roads, freed or they took toll booths, they even closed the Ciudad Juárez customs and affected circulation in 17 states of the country. They thus demonstrated their disagreement with the agricultural policies of the so-called Fourth Transformation.
Without any evaluation of the result of the destruction of agricultural institutions and policies carried out by the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and that caused the fall in production and profitability, as well as the increase in imports and the price of tortillas, the current government intends to continue them to the detriment of farmers and peasants who produce for the domestic market.
Those who mobilized are the commercial grain producers, who contribute more than 60 percent of the national production of corn, 46 percent of beans, 92 percent of wheat and 73 percent of sorghum, and are the ones who feed the population of the cities.
The government’s response is the same that the different parties in power have given in the past to those who express disagreement with their actions: try to divide and delegitimize the movements and their leaders, invent dark political interests, but not review the true causes that force farmers to leave their plots and demonstrate on public roads.
For seven years there has been no financing for the planting of basic crops because the government eliminated the institutions that operated as development banks. Commercial farmers do not have the necessary resources to plant crops and therefore depend on food credits. Commercial banks offer credit at very high rates and require conditions and guarantees that they cannot meet. There is also no insurance for crops against natural disasters.
It also eliminated marketing programs that gave some certainty to producers and prevented companies from reducing prices as they pleased. There were subsidized price coverage to guarantee a minimum price to the producer despite having international prices as a reference. They operated target prices that regulated the producer price and when the market offered a lower price, the government contributed the difference. There was contract farming, which gave some certainty to the producer and the buyer from the beginning of planting.
In addition to destroying this institutional framework, the government restricted subsidies only to self-consumption producers with less than 20 hectares of rainfed land and 5 hectares of irrigation.
The results were not immediate, since during the first years of the last six-year term, good international prices allowed the market by itself to offer profitability to producers. But from 2023 onwards, the situation changed and the government had to support farmers with emergent measures.
Production results also demonstrated the erroneousness of the policy of leaving commercial producers without any subsidies in the open market. In 2024, production of the autumn-winter cycle was reduced by 3.7 million tons, mainly in Sinaloa. But the production of the spring-summer cycle was also reduced by about 400 thousand tons, and in 2025 the production of autumn-winter corn decreased by 4.7 million tons compared to 2023, which will place the total production of 2025 at levels similar to the low levels of 2024. That is why farmers demand a complete agricultural policy, built between the government and peasant organizations, that allows the production and profitability of grains to be recovered. basics.
Currently, grain prices on the Chicago Stock Exchange have fallen, and due to the United States trade war with China, Mexico is positioned as one of the most important buyers of the neighboring country’s crops. Corn imports until September amount to 18.1 million tons, of which 820 thousand are white corn.
Mexican farmers in the open market must compete with cereals at depressed international prices, without subsidies or institutions that guarantee them a minimum profit for their work. Hence another of their demands is to remove basic grains from the T-MEC in the upcoming renegotiation.
The truth is that farmers are ringing the alarm bells. National agriculture is in crisis, and if the government does not respond, the food of Mexicans will remain in the hands of transnational corporations.
* Director of the Center for Studies for Change in the Mexican Countryside (Ceccam)
