The National Front To Save the Mexican Countryside (FNRCM) is now lining up support in Mexico’s farm states for an Oct. 14 national “agricultural strike.” Votes are still being taken by local farmers, state by state, as whether to join the protest, but organizers say enough states are already on board to make up the majority of the Mexican countryside. Farm leaders are calling for a lot of people, tractors, and other ag machinery to take to the highways that day, and for other citizens to support them, despite the disruptions the strike will cause.
The decision to go for a national protest came out of the Sept. 25 forum on “Restoring National Agriculture” held by the FNRCM and top economists from the Economics Department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. The head of the Sinaloa farmers and a leading organizer in the FNRCM, Baltazar Valdez Armentia, told Sonora’s Diario de Yaqui on Oct. 8 that the farm protest’s key demand is for President Claudia Sheinbaum to meet with them, so they can present her with the policy package adopted by the farm leaders and economists at that forum: to remove basic grains from the provisions of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) free trade treaty, revive the public Development Bank and provide it with sufficient resources to function, and guarantee parity prices for agriculture produce, among other measures.
