US Farm Subsidies Fuel Mexico Corn Crisis

Oxfam-America
Wednesday, 27 August 2003

Mexico's 10,000-year heritage of corn production is being destroyed after just 10 years of rigged "free trade" rules with the United States, international agency Oxfam said today.

In a new report "Dumping Without Borders" published today, Oxfam says that Mexican corn prices are freefalling in competition from heavily subsidized US imports. Local farm incomes are slashed, resulting in rural suffering and misery from which millions of people are seeking escape.

"The Mexican corn crisis is another example of world trade rules that are rigged to help the rich and powerful, while destroying the livelihoods of millions of poor people," Oxfam Campaigns Director Phil Twyford said.

The US pays its corn farmers $10 billion a year which encourages them to produce a surplus that is then dumped onto world markets at artificially low prices. New Oxfam calculations show US corn is dumped in Mexico at between $105m and $145m a year less than the cost of production.

Oxfam says that successive Mexican governments must share blame for the worsening rural crisis after liberalizing the corn market with little regard for the impact on the lives of the country's three million corn farmers.

If the benefits of world trade are to be shared fairly—as everyone says they want to see happen — developing countries like Mexico must be allowed to protect their weaker industries. And rich countries like the US must stop subsidizing their agricultural exports.

Read the briefing paper: Dumping Without Borders

For more information, or to contact Oxfam-America, see their website at: www.oxfamamerica.org