Source: The Independent
Competition with highly subsidized U.S. farmers is driving their Mexican counterparts into bankruptcy. Whereas south of the border, guaranteed prices for farmers’ crops are a thing of the past, corporate corn growers north of the Rio Bravo can receive up to $21,000 an acre in subsidies from the U.S. government, enabling them to dump their corn over the border at 80 percent of cost. The impact of this inundation has been to force six million farmers and their families here to abandon their plots and leap into the migration stream, according to a 2004 Carnegie Endowment study. This assault on poor farmers will be exacerbated at the end of 2007 when all tariffs on U.S. corn are abolished. Meanwhile, President Calderón seeks to tamp down tortilla prices by importing up to two million duty-free tons to augment what Mexican farmers can or cannot produce. Such a solution is guaranteed to drive more farmers off the land. Even worse is that much of the new influx of NAFTA corn will be transgenic (GENETICALLY-MODIFIED CORN).

A great deal of the 36 million tons of corn Mexico has imported from the United States in the past six years is genetically modified – 40 to 60 percent – estimates the environmental group Greenpeace. For U.S. producers, barred from selling GM corn in Europe and Japan, Mexico is a dumping ground for the grain.