...you prob’ly know about how more and more of mexico is being corpoRat farmed, and the subsistence farmers being driven from the land, where they grew corn and beans and the occasional cabrito…they can’t afford to BUY tortillas and beans they usta raise, and they cant raise any anmore, either…which elicited this reply--and which is the REAL reason for this post:
con agra and dow chemical are colonizing the continent, displacing more and more people, many–at least a large number–of whom migrate to El Norte, where–deprived of their traditional diets, and swamped with fat and hfcs, they balloon, and their kids too…
the best (JSwiftian) hope is that climate change will exterminate enough people that the competition for the diminishing resources will subside a bit…
kirk murphy says:
there was a really good comment here about the disruption of traditional Mexican agrarian communities by Big Ag.
(hey, now it’s up nested in 224)
The subsistence farmers’ displacement was caused by NAFTA.
NAFTA forced open Mexican agricultural markets to megacorp commodity imports…
So US Big Ag sells subsidized low cost corn….
(at) below-costs of traditional production.
(edit)And now that indigenous/local corn production is disrupted…and the global markets’ mercy leaves rural Mexicans to ourbid Mercedes owners for the corn they eat..
tortilla prices steadily rise out of reach.
Massive displacement of rural Mexican ag families.
Massive internal dislocation and emigration.
US tax dollars at work.
How - the exports forced upon Mexico by the NAFTA are made possible by - taxpayers!
Lucky us.
We finance the destruction of Mexica local subsistence ag and the massive human dilocation.
Such a deal.
Here’s where we ante up:
- US farm subsidies (to Big Ag)
- US Corps of Engineers subsidies (required to turn the Upper Mississippi into a barge pond)
- New Orleans (Corps of Engineers’ ship channels hastens wetland destruction)
- “export” of US topsoil (Big AG commodity farming is not sustainable; massive topsoil runoff is the price fo surplus grain)
- US Medicare/Health care (Big AG chemicals cause widespread increases in lymphoma and other malignancies as well as increased infertility and neurodevelopmental abnormaliites. Our tax dollars pay for these costs)
- US energy consumption / carbon production (Commodity AG is wholly dependent upon massive fossil fuel input [for fertilizers, herbicides, machinery, and transport].
- Global warming (see above).
But - on the bright side - think how well this all works for ConAgra and Cargill and Monsanto and friends…
Not so well for the global cradle of corn biodiversity. Monsanto’s GMO corn has contaminated the Mexican corn genome.
Food and health and hope?
Bon Appetit