After a week-long sit-in which shut down services at the Mexican state of Sinaloa’s main government building in the state capital of Sinaloa, corn producers won their two main demands last week: an agreement that long-overdue government price-support compensatory payments and insurance coverage would be disbursed to them, and a meeting with officials from the national government to discuss the “structural changes” required to free farming from the grip of global speculators.
The first may help farmers stay afloat so they can keep farming in the short-term; secure survival over any longer term requires the structural changes the farmers are also demanding. The farm leaders have few illusions that they are going to win that battle anytime soon, but they also know that without reestablishing a national agriculture policy which puts food before speculator profits, Mexico will not survive as a sovereign nation.
Baltazar Valdez Armentía, the head of Sinaloa’s main corn growers’ association and a leader of the National Front To Save the Mexican Countryside, and nine other leaders from his corn growers’ association, took their case to Mexico City, where on July 30, they were received by some Senators, and then given Senate facilities to hold a press conference, and on July 31, met with officials from the Agriculture Department.
