By: Marte Vega Román, President of CAADES
On July 1st of this year, Julio Berdegue Sacristanvirtual Secretary of Agriculture of the New Federal Government, published a message on social network X, about the New policy for corn in MexicoThis announcement contains five basic points:
Continue with the ban on genetically modified crops in the Corn sowing for any use. (This policy has always been developed by Mexico).
Self-sufficiency of White corn for human consumption. (In the last six-year terms, Mexico has been self-sufficient in the white corn productionleaving remnants that have been channeled to industrial, livestock and eventually to the consumption export).
Promote the production of yellow corn No transgenic to reduce the imports(The current Government recommended this policy in the decree of February 13, 2023, however the results of corn production in Mexico in recent years have not only stagnated but have been reduced, which has implied extraordinary imports of yellow corn in 2023 and 23 million tons are expected in 2024, which is a record figure).
The policy established in the decree of February 13 referred to in the previous point is continued, in the sense of allowing imports of transgenic yellow corn only for livestock and industrial use.
The policy of promoting the conservation, production and use of native corn and supporting the communities that cultivate it continues.
After several working meetings with Mr. Berdegué, where we presented him with a diagnosis of our sector and our proposals, we found a lot of agreement with his approaches.
To carry out the above points, as CAADES, we proposed prioritizing commercial agriculture as a strategic activity for national security and the right to food, maintaining the current policy to support small producers.
To this end, it is important that these proposals be translated into a programmatic structure in the PEF – PEC for programs such as financing and insurance, marketing support, rehabilitation of hydro-agricultural infrastructure, technical development of plots and support for productivity.
We also proposed strengthening budgets for plant health and information systems, which are the backbone for producing healthy and safe food and competing in exports.
Only in this way could we increase grain production, particularly corn, and meet the points raised by the virtual Secretary of Agriculture to effectively improve food security indices for grains in Mexico.
More from CAADES:
#Public #policy #proposal #corn #government
