Defending food sovereignty in Mexico

In October 2023, the group Demanda Colectiva was awarded the annual Environmental Prize from the Pax Natura Foundation. The prize was founded in 1996 to “create peace with nature on all levels for the preservation of life on this beautiful Planet Earth.” Previous prizewinners include biologist Jane Goodall and former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias. The foundation selected the Demanda Colectiva to join such esteemed company, according to president and founder Randall Tolpinrud, for its “courage and wisdom to resist the ravages of industrial agriculture that degrades the land, destroys biodiversity and encourages increased carbon emissions.”

Nine years ago, multiple citizen groups representing farmers, consumers, and environmental groups, won an injunction in court to stop multinational seed companies from being able to plant genetically modified corn in Mexico. Their biggest concern was the potential contamination of the incredible diversity of local land races and varieties of corn in the country that is the origin of this diversity, and the cultural traditions that go with it. Ten years later and despite a continual barrage of lawsuits and claims, largely from the seed companies that want to introduce GMOs to Mexico, the injunction still holds. But it is constantly being challenged. Demanda Colectiva continues the fight.

The story of the resistance by Demanda Colectiva is covered in great detail in a chapter in the book Eating Tomorrow: Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food (Wise 2019). The resistance entered a new phase when the Moreno movement gained the presidency in Mexico in 2018, and the new president has voiced support for rural communities. Government programs now favor small and medium-scale producers, promote agroecology and agroforestry, offer support prices for key food crops, and promote laws to enshrine such policies. A right to food law is being discussed in the Mexican legislature. Most dramatically, the president has issued a presidential decree that not only bans GM corn planting but also its consumption in tortillas and other basic corn preparations.

This is a dramatic shift after three decades of neoliberal, pro-free trade governments in Mexico. And it has provoked a strong backlash from the U.S. government, which is taking Mexico to an arbitration panel under the renegotiated US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement to try to stop the GM corn decree. How the arbitration will play out will soon be seen, but meanwhile the Demanda Colectiva continues its work as the protector of the “culture of maize” that is an essential foundation of the food systems of Mexico. From an agroecological perspective, food sovereignty must be honored. Multiple articles have been published in our journal that document the environmental and social sustainability of the corn agroecosystem known as the milpa, as well as the dangers of contamination from transgenic seed. Recognizing Demanda Colectiva for being an important voice for food sovereignty in Mexico is a very well-deserved honor.

I want to acknowledge that this editorial is an adaptation of an article in a recent newsletter from Food Tank which can be read at https://foodtank.com/news/2023/10/mexicos-corn-defenders-honored-with-environmental-prize/.