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Why Mexico's Small Corn Farmers Go Hungry
The New York Times
March 3, 2003,
By TINA ROSENBERG
Macario Hernandez's grandfather grew corn in
the hills of Puebla, Mexico. His father does
the same. Mr. Hernandez grows corn, too, but
not for much longer. Around his village of
Guadalupe Victoria, people farm the way they
have for centuries, on tiny plots of land
watered only by rain, their plows pulled by
burros. Mr. Hernandez, a thoughtful man of
30, is battling to bring his family and
neighbors out of the Middle Ages. But these
days modernity is less his goal than his
enemy.
This is because he, like other small farmers
in Mexico, competes with American products
raised on megafarms that use satellite
imagery to mete out fertilizer. These
products are so heavily subsidized by the
government that many are exported for less
than it costs to grow them. According to the
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
in Minneapolis, American corn sells in
Mexico for 25 percent less than its cost.
The prices Mr. Hernandez and others receive
are so low that they lose money with each
acre they plant.
In January, campesinos from all over the
country marched into Mexico City's central
plaza to protest. Thousands of men in jeans
and straw hats jammed the Zocalo, alongside
horses and tractors. Farmers have staged
smaller protests around Mexico for months.
The protests have won campesino
organizations a series of talks with the
government. But they are unlikely to get
what they want: a renegotiation of the North
American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta,
protective temporary tariffs and a new
policy that seeks to help small farmers
instead of trying to force them off the
land.
The problems of rural Mexicans are echoed
around the world as countries lower their
import barriers, required by free trade
treaties and the rules of the World Trade
Organization. When markets are open,
agricultural products flood in from wealthy
nations, which subsidize agriculture and
allow agribusiness to export crops cheaply.
European farmers get 35 percent of their
income in government subsidies, American
farmers 20 percent. American subsidies are
at record levels, and last year, Washington
passed a farm bill that included a $40
billion increase in subsidies to large grain
and cotton farmers.
It seems paradoxical to argue that cheap
food hurts poor people. But three-quarters
of the world's poor are rural. When
subsidized imports undercut their products,
they starve. Agricultural subsidies, which
rob developing countries of the ability to
export crops, have become the most important
dispute at the W.T.O. Wealthy countries do
far more harm to poor nations with these
subsidies than they do good with foreign
aid.
While such subsidies have been deadly for
the 18 million Mexicans who live on small
farms -- nearly a fifth of the country --
Mexico's near-complete neglect of the
countryside is at fault, too. Mexican
officials say openly that they long ago
concluded that small agriculture was
inefficient, and that the solution for
farmers was to find other work. "The
government's solution for the problems of
the countryside is to get campesinos to stop
being campesinos," says Victor Suarez, a
leader of a coalition of small farmers.
But the government's determination not to
invest in losers is a self-fulfilling
prophecy. The small farmers I met in their
fields in Puebla want to stop growing corn
and move into fruit or organic
vegetables. Two years ago Mr. Hernandez, who
works with a farming cooperative, brought in
thousands of peach plants. But only a few
farmers could buy them. Farm credit
essentially does not exist in Mexico, as the
government closed the rural bank, and other
bankers do not want to lend to small
farmers. "We are trying to get people to
rethink and understand that the traditional
doesn't work," says Mr. Hernandez. "But the
lack of capital is deadly."
The government does subsidize producers, at
absurdly small levels compared with
subsidies in the United States. Corn growers
get about $30 an acre. Small programs exist
to provide technical help and fertilizer to
small producers, but most farmers I met
hadn't even heard of them.
Mexico should be helping its corn farmers
increase their productivity or move into new
crops -- especially since few new jobs have
been created that could absorb these
farmers. Mexicans fleeing the countryside
are flocking to Houston and swelling
Mexico's cities, already congested with the
poor and unemployed. If Washington wants to
reduce Mexico's immigration to the United
States, ending subsidies for agribusiness
would be far more effective than beefing up
the border patrol.
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