AND
Corn is the Root is the new plan promoted by President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo to protect and promote the planting, production and consumption of native corn in Mexico. A strategy that seeks to guarantee that the value that the grain acquires when it becomes food – tortillas, tamales, tlacoyos, pozole and others – remains in the peasant communities, thus ensuring long-term sustainable production.
The name recognizes native corn as our cultural root, the basis of our diet and a key element for the future of the country. Strengthening food sovereignty is essential to guarantee healthy food, produced without destroying the environment and strengthening peasant communities, guardians of the enormous diversity of corn and cornfields in Mexico. Without them, global food security is also at risk.
The reforms to articles 4 and 27 of the constitution, approved this year, represent significant progress, by prohibiting the planting of genetically modified (GM) corn and recognizing corn as a “basic food and element of national identity.” However, the ban on GM corn for human consumption was excluded. This corn is harmful to health and the environment, in addition to being nutritionally inferior to our native corn and being closely linked to glyphosate.
This exclusion was surely related to the pressure exerted by the United States through the controversy panel promoted within the framework of the T-MEC, which dealt with restrictions on the import of transgenic corn for human and, eventually, animal consumption, although it did not include glyphosate. The final report ignored the scientific evidence that supported the Mexican government’s policy to prevent the population from consuming corn that is harmful to health. Unfortunately, the conclusion of the panel – which considered these restrictions as violating the treaty – was accepted by the federal Executive, which led to the publication of a decree that left the articles related to GM corn without effect. The same did not happen with regard to glyphosate.
Even so, the Constitution establishes that any use of GM corn other than planting must demonstrate that it is safe for human health, the environment and biodiversity. Therefore, now complying with the Constitution requires secondary laws, regulations and effective mechanisms to prevent GM corn from reaching our fields and food, since scientific evidence, free of conflicts of interest, has shown that GMOs and the associated glyphosate cause harm to health. This evidence is reinforced by the recent retraction of one of the “scientific” articles most used by the industry to promote GMOs, despite the fact that for more than 20 years there have been documented warnings about their harm.
That the GMO and pesticide industries try to make us believe that without glyphosate we cannot produce food is part of their foolish and toxic business. Mexico had a corn surplus in past decades without GMOs or glyphosate, and the agroecological practices that made it possible are still alive in our country. In addition, Conahcyt, Sowing Life and Production for Wellbeing left sovereign developments of bioinputs and the capacity to produce them on a sufficient scale, some already approved by Senasica and others under evaluation by Cofepris. Paradoxically, glyphosate was introduced with lying campaigns during the neoliberal period, predominantly in impoverished regions.
There is concern that the import of transgenic white corn with glyphosate from the United States is on the rise (310 percent more in 2025) and that recent studies show that this corn continues to contaminate silos, industrial flours, tortillas and other foods.
It is urgent to support both corn farmers and larger-scale producers who do not use GMOs or glyphosate. The three levels of government must strengthen institutions and monitoring mechanisms to prevent the entry and distribution of these “technological packages.”
Although Mexico produces more than 20 million tons of this valuable grain (spring-summer cycle from 2024 to 2025), there is potential to produce much more. Human consumption of corn in our country is 14.28 million tons of the grain almost directly (0.3 to one kilogram per day). Native corns are nutritionally superior to hybrids, as they contain greater amounts of proteins, fibers and intermediate chain fatty acids, and are not diabetogenic.
For the United States, transgenic corn is a nodal commodity in its economy. With huge subsidies, they flood the national and global market with their junk corn, causing massive damage and multi-million dollar profits for a few corporations. They have generated false “science” to obtain greater profits, at the cost of great damage to health and the environment around the world. No trade treaty should imply imperial damage to the people.
We have a government guided by the principles of Mexican Humanism, where the reproduction of a model that destroys common goods should not take place. There is no legal, moral or technical restriction to fully recover food sovereignty. Not doing so is unconstitutional today.
Hopefully, the progress of the previous six-year term will be deepened with the National Native Corn Plan: Corn is the Root, and a comprehensive strategic plan will be developed that includes medium and large producers to guarantee, in the long term, national food sovereignty.
Without corn, there is no country!
* Full-time researcher, Institute of Ecology, UNAM.
