While, with only a few days until the end of AMLO’s tenure, there is no way all 20 Constitutional reforms will get pushed through in this administration. But with Sheinbaum’s “Techno-Populist” (in the words of former Peña Nieto sub-cabinet officer Vanessa Rubio in Americas Quarterly) … supposedly looking at “market solutions”to social issues, coupled with Sheinbaum’s “green” policies… one of the more contentious reforms — banning glyposate has an even better chance of passing.
I sort of skipped over in my post “Resolution and Independence” the final “whereas” in the list of three additional “concerns”
Wheras broader constitutional reforms would —
[. . .]
(3) impose a profibition on geneitcally modified corn.
US and Canadian “big ag” has been arguing both through the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, and even in testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee (whaaaaatttt?) that banning glyphosate resstent corn is an existernial threat to both Mexico and the US, dismissing Mexican claims that the stuff IS dangerous and would be banned for direct HUMAN consumption until something better was available to control corn pests.
Well… leaving aside that most basic fact that it’s up to Mexico to decide what is and isn’t suitable for consumption, the argument that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE to Montsano’s “round-up” and planing glyphosate resistant GM seed, itappears there are.
COPRIFIS (Mexico’s equivalent of the FDA) is set to approve two is set to approve two “bioinsumos” (a hard to exactly translate word — basically, fertilizer, herbicides, plant food) neither of which require seed crops to be genetically modified to withstand treatment that are already on the market, and the National Council for Hunmities, Science and Technology introcuded a third — an organic fertilizer for a range of food crops — that it is presenting to COPRAFIS for approval.
The big problem for the US… all three are Mexican products. And, while the 5.9 million liters the three have available now are sufficient to meet Mexico’s needs, you can imagine what this would mean to Monsanto’s bottom line if US exporters switched to the alternatives.
(see: “Presentan un herbicida amigable con el ambiente para remplazar el glifosato”, Jornada, 26 Sept 2024))
Well…
Bioinsumos -products obtained from the processing of plant matter and the isolation and multiplication of microorganisms.