The outgoing government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador carried out a policy for years to drastically reduce the large imports of yellow corn, trying to replace them with local production, but with little results.
The new Mexican government will set aside the aspiration to reduce imports of yellow corn and achieve self-sufficiency in the production of this type of grain, said the next Secretary of Agriculture, Julio Berdegué.
The outgoing government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador carried out a policy for years to drastically reduce the large imports of yellow corn, trying to replace them with local production, but with little results.
Now, the government that the president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, of the ruling Morena, will lead starting in October for six years, will only seek to maintain self-sufficiency in white corn.
"Our objective is not to reduce imports, our objective is to produce more," Berdegué said on the subject. "Hopefully we can reduce imports, but our goal is not self-sufficiency in yellow corn (...) Not in this six-year term," he added.
Berdegué, a 66-year-old agronomist who accompanied Sheinbaum in his campaign and was announced for the position last month, said Mexico may have to continue importing a lot of corn to feed livestock, in order to satisfy the population's greater meat consumption. .
Mexico is a key buyer of transgenic yellow corn from the United States, purchasing nearly US$6 billion annually.
Both countries are in the middle of a dispute over grain trade that is being settled in a dispute settlement panel of the North American trade agreement, TMEC, from which a resolution is expected in the last quarter of the current year.
The center of the dispute is a 2023 decree from the current López Obrador government that prohibits yellow corn for "human consumption", understood as anything for direct use, especially in flour and dough for tortillas, a basic food in the diet of Mexicans.
The United States alleges that this ban has no scientific basis and violates commitments under the USMCA. Mexico insists that this is not the case nor does it affect grain imports.
The decree does allow, however, the use of transgenic yellow corn as feed for livestock, which represents the majority of Mexico's annual imports of US corn, and for industrial use.
Berdegué said that Sheinbaum's government will fully comply with López Obrador's decree.
"If we are self-sufficient in white corn and we have no problems with the importation of transgenic or non-transgenic yellow corn for forage and industrial uses, where is the trade problem?" said Berdegué.
DEFORESTATION
Berdegué, a former official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has said that Sheinbaum, an energy engineer and former mayor of Mexico City, aims to renew water governance in the sector. agriculture, the main user of the scarce resource.
Part of this task is to strengthen the "water cycle", which includes a frontal fight against deforestation, caused in large part to establish lucrative crops such as livestock and avocado.
Berdegué said that Sheinbaum's government will have an "aspirational goal" of reducing deforestation caused by agricultural activity by 50% by the end of his administration, in 2030.
"It is a very ambitious goal, but I believe that we can," he confided, adding that there are calculations that now estimate deforestation at about 200 thousand hectares per year.
