We have to hope for the best and plan for the worst.
That’s a good approach to a lot of challenges—and it’s also how we feel following Mexico’s presidential election on June 2, when voters swept Claudia Sheinbaum into the presidency and gave her ruling Morena party a big legislative majority.
As a pair of Mexican dairy farmers, we have a simple message for President-elect Sheinbaum and her political allies: Please stop the war on agricultural technology.
During her campaign, Sheinbaum promised to support and reinforce many of the harmful policies of outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, nicknamed “AMLO.”
Yet every transition of political power is a chance for a fresh start—and President-elect Sheinbaum may have shown a pragmatic streak immediately after her victory. As the stock market dipped and exchange rates worsened, in a sign that investors are worried about her agenda, she had the Secretary of the IRS confirm he would be staying in her team and gave guarantees that the Central Bank (Treasury) will remain autonomous.
That statement helped the markets stabilize a little, at least for now.
By the time she takes office on October 1, perhaps she will take a new look at agriculture.
She can do a lot better than AMLO.
For the last six years, he promised so much—but for farmers, he was a disaster. He promoted “food sovereignty,” which sounds good in the abstract but in practice meant a rejection of the tools and technologies that have helped farmers in other countries produce bounties.
Rather than embracing the biotech crops that have led to record harvests in the United States and Canada, AMLO promoted the use of only Mexican corn varieties. His administration only recently suspended its threat to ban glyphosate, the world’s best and most popular crop-protection tool.
The result is the opposite of food sovereignty: Mexico imports more food than ever before.
We of course should welcome the chance to trade goods and services around the world. Last year, Mexico surpassed China as the biggest trading partner of the United States, though this was more a result of Chinese decline than Mexican improvement.
Farmers have a lot to gain from international trade. Our climate is ideal for fruits and vegetables that don’t grow well in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. This is a major competitive advantage. We should make the most of it.
This is also the best kind of food sovereignty: The ability for Mexican farmers to focus on what we do well, using the best tools and methods available and selling what we produce to customers at home and abroad.
We are reminded of the old quip: “Mexican” is another way of saying “Mex-I-Can.”
For us to thrive, though, we need the top technologies, from the biotech crops that have proven their worth for nearly three decades to the gene-edited seeds that are now on the horizon. We also need access to crop-protection products that help us defeat the pests, weeds, and disease that pose a constant threat.
Mexico has an amazing legacy of agricultural innovation. We should lean into it rather than reject it.
This is how we promote the goal of sustainable agriculture: Let’s exploit the technologies that will allow us to grow more food on less land than ever before, in a way that both conserves the environment and helps farmers make a living.
AMLO focused on handouts—direct payments to farmers and others that made little economic sense and felt more like bribes for votes.
Farmers don’t need handouts. We need hand-ups—policies that will reward work and allow us to thrive. President-elect Sheinbaum could start by restoring (or even create from scratch) the programs that were dedicated to productivity, efficiency, and competitiveness. If insurance, financing, and extension were brought back, agriculture would be reactivated on its own.
Perhaps she might also quit the attacks on glyphosate and admit that it is here to stay. She has the power to end the uncertainty that has surrounded this safe product. Politics won’t change a thing, but public policy will.
Mexico and President-elect Sheinbaum face a huge range of daunting problems: Debt, crime, violence, corruption, unemployment, and more. Taken together, they amount to a national crisis.
For farmers and everyone, things may get a lot worse before they improve.
We hope that President-elect Sheinbaum will realize how much agriculture matters, the value created and how helping farmers thrive can help Mexico be better too.
