The Future of Mexican Maize

Agriculture, policy, and the environment

Hello dear readers. COVID has got me again, almost a year to the day from last year. And, sadly, Substack has frozen ANOTHER one of my lovely long article drafts. Totally inaccessible. Thankfully I learned from last time and wrote the bulk of my article in a Word document on my computer, so this is the copy & paste. It will be less polished than the other one, and without links because I don’t have the energy to go find them all again, so I apologize for that.

There will also be no photos, dividers, or buttons in this article, because I have no idea what causes the drafts to freeze.

I am also seriously considering leaving this platform over this issue. This is the second big time investment I’ve put into articles, only to have them disappear. What do you think? I also blog at www.thefoodhistorian.com and I have a Patreon account. I created this Substack because I wanted a place to discuss current events and politics in the context of food history. But the endless glitches are getting to me. If you really want me to stay, please let me know in the comments!

And now, for the article:

Americans love Mexican food. Or at least, what they think is Mexican food. Most of it is Tex-Mex, a flexible combination of Indigenous, European, and adapted American foodways springing up along the borderlands. Real Mexican food is ancient and complex. But the one constant in pretty much everything that’s called Mexican? (besides salsa) Tortillas and tortilla chips. Almost always made from corn.

Americans are most familiar with mass-produced, highly salted, fried tortilla chips. But while fried tortillas have a long heritage in Mexico (tostadas, for example), the first commercially produced ones were introduced in LA in the 1940s as a way to use misshapen tortillas mangled in factory production. The mass-market appeal of sealed plastic bags of tortilla chips is a far cry from the housemade ones at many a favorite Mexican restaurant. Sturdier, less salty, and easier to voraciously consume, they are infinitely better, and yet almost impossible to find in stores.

Corn is indigenous to southern Mexico where Indigenous agriculturalists carefully bred hundreds of varieties from teosinte – a wild grass with large seeds – 10,000 years ago. From there it spread to the South American continent, and north throughout North America – just about everywhere east of the Rockies. It became the dominant starch throughout much of the Americas and a staple both culinarily and culturally. Of course, “corn” is the English word for it – a term applied to all grains. Outside of the United States it is usually called “maize,” which derives from the Taino word for it – mahiz. The Taino people were the first to come in contact with Europeans when Christopher Columbus landed on their shores, bringing death, destruction, and slavery.

I have only been to Mexico once, a quick border crossing on a visit to Arizona as a high school student. I don’t pretend to be an expert in Mexican food or its history. But Mexico and its corn have been on my mind for decades. In a college writing class, we had to do a group project (UGH) on a controversial topic. My classmates were uninspired, and I was interested in sustainable agriculture, so I suggested we do genetically engineered corn and its impact on Mexico.

As the birthplace of corn, Mexico is also its cradle of genetic diversity. Hundreds of varieties, some of them ancient, along with wild teosinte, still grow throughout the country. But that genetic diversity is threatened by genetically engineered corn. Corn is wind-pollinated, meaning that it can be contaminated with genetic material from other varieties.

A few weeks ago, Mexico banned the importation of GE corn in an effort to protect its landrace varieties and support its agriculture. It also plans to phase out the use of GE corn and glyphosate herbicides domestically by 2024. But the Biden Administration is challenging that ban, in large part to protect American agriculture. Both GE corn and glyphosate (like Roundup) are in widespread use in the United States. Mexico is currently one of the largest consumers of US corn exports.

What makes the United States think it can challenge a domestic law in a sovereign country? The North American Free Trade Agreement, also known as NAFTA. Designed to improve trade relations between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, it had some positive effects, but the effect on Mexico’s agricultural economy was devastating. Passed in 1994, the original agreement was supposed to be mutually beneficial. Mexico would open its borders to tariff-free imports of US agricultural products, especially corn, and American manufacturing was supposed to move to Mexico, providing decent jobs and boosting the Mexican economy. Except, for the most part, that didn’t happen. The bulk of American manufacturing moved to Asia. Cheap GE corn from the US flooded Mexican markets and Mexican farmers, despite government attempts to subsidize domestic agriculture, simply couldn’t compete. The price of corn in Mexico plummeted and farmers were forced to abandon their farms. While auto manufacturing did create new jobs in Mexico, it was not nearly enough to stem the tide of unemployment. The overall Mexican GDP may have risen, but local economies tanked. From 1995 to 2011, the number of Mexican migrants in the United States skyrocketed. Meanwhile, Mexico saw a dramatic increase in drug cartel activity, holding impoverished agricultural communities hostage and using the more generous border policy to flood the United States with addictive drugs. Mexican immigration has slowed considerably since 2018.

U.S. corn was (and still is) cheaper than Mexican corn in large part because American agricultural subsidies of corn are based on a price floor – if the “free market” price does not meet that floor, the federal government reimburses farmers for the difference. In practice, this means that most U.S. corn (and soy) is sold for less than it costs to produce. Mexican farmers simply can’t compete.

When it came to corn, NAFTA was a law of unintended consequences. In 2020, the Trump Administration approved the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which essentially just continued NAFTA, with a few updates like improved labor laws in Mexico and opening Canadian dairy markets to US farmers. This is the agreement under which the Biden Administration is considering challenging Mexico’s new law. They argue that Mexico’s new law is not based on scientific research. Mexican officials disagree.

I’ve long been disturbed by U.S. policy on what it considers “commodity” crops – mainly corn, soy, wheat, and sugar. With corn and soy in particular, agricultural subsidies ensure that their prices remain artificially low. And farmers who grow commodity crops are incredibly disincentivized from diversifying, adapting crops to climate change, and growing anything but commodity crops. It makes more economic sense for farmers to plant an entire crop of corn, even though they know it will fail due to drought or weather, because federally subsidized crop insurance will cover their costs.

Subsidized GE corn hasn’t just had a negative impact on Mexican agriculture. It’s also the driving force behind much of America’s proliferation of cheap ultra-processed foods. Fruits and vegetables just can’t compete. Conventionally produced GE corn also requires huge fertilizer inputs, and much of it is grown with heavy applications of glyphosate. Runoff from this agriculture has created an enormous dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, killing wildlife, including valuable fish and shellfish stocks.

Many communities across the United States are trying to challenge the dominance of GE corn. Indigenous communities are preserving and reviving their ancestral varieties. Small scale grain mills are turning heirloom varieties into extraordinarily flavorful grits and cornmeal. And Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans are continuing their longstanding traditions of taking freshly nixtamalized corn and turning it into the most delicious homemade tortillas.

Mexico itself is trying to protect that ancient tradition. Whether or not they’ll be successful remains to be seen. But in my mind, it’s a worthy endeavor. And the United States could stand to kick its conventionally raised GE corn habit. Transitioning to other agriculture won’t be easy, but Mexico, and the environment, would likely thank us.