Since last Monday, July 21, hundreds of corn growers from the state of Sinaloa, Mexico’s main producer of white corn, have occupied all entrances to the state Government Palace in Culiacán, the state’s capital, demanding the state and the federal government step in to protect farmers who are facing bankruptcy because the “market” prices offered for their corn continue to be way below the rising costs of their production, especially under conditions of drought. In the face of a situation so dire that farmers and their families are now going hungry, protests have been spreading across Mexico’s grain-producing states, led by farm organizations which have joined forces in the National Front To Save the Mexican Countryside.
The protest in Sinaloa is now the spearhead of these actions. The government has yet to disburse promised price support payments for the farmers’ 2023-2024 crops, never mind those for the current crop cycle. The farmers know, however, that while receiving the delayed payments may allow them to survive another day, the only real solution is to replace the entire agriculture policy of the past three decades.
Under the reign of the NAFTA-USMCA free trade accords, farmers on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border have been ruined, and Mexico’s productive family farmers now face bankruptcy because foreign financial interests moved in to take over more and more of the national food market.
