Timothy A Wise: High Risks, Few Rewards for Mexico with Monsanto's Maize Timothy A Wise - Al Jazeera
go to original May 28, 2014

Mexico is the 'center of origin' for maize (Reuters)

I'd come to Mexico to investigate the ongoing controversy over the proposed introduction of genetically modified (GM) maize into the birthplace of this important global food crop. The issue was hot, because last October a Mexican judge had issued an injunction halting all experimental and commercial planting of GM maize, a process that was well underway in six northern states. The ruling cited the need for precaution to ensure that Mexico's rich diversity of maize varieties were protected from inadvertent "gene flow" from GM maize. (See my earlier article on the injunction.)

As I began to investigate this most controversial of biotech initiatives, the question that most puzzled me was: why anyone in Mexico thinks the country needs anything that transgenic maize has to offer?

Monsanto, of course, had an answer to that question. I met with a group of company officials in their high-rise offices in Mexico City's transnational business district of Santa Fe. They offered their "Vision 2020", in which transgenic maize is key to feeding the world. In Mexico, they argued, it would help double Mexican maize production, reduce persistent rural poverty among the country's small-scale maize farmers, restore the country's self-sufficiency in its key food staple and reduce the negative environmental impacts of maize farming. They even used the term "food sovereignty" to describe their goal for Mexico. This was more than a vision; this was a hallucination.

Read the rest at Al Jazeera

Timothy A Wise is the Policy Research Director, Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, Medford.

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!