Drought and lack of support pushes corn imports – El Sol de México

By the end of the year, Mexico will have imported 22.7 million tons of corn, which will not only represent a growth of 15.8 percent compared to 2023, but also a record figure. According to estimates by the Agricultural Markets Consulting Group (GCMA), this increase is due to several factors, including the drought that hit the country in recent months, which affected the harvest of this grain, and the lack of support for the sector in this administration.

In the period from January to May alone, 10.4 million tons of corn were imported, mainly yellow, which represents an increase of 25 percent annually, according to data from the National Customs Agency of Mexico (ANAM). Almost all of the corn imported by the country is yellow, used for fodder and for some industries, less than five percent is white corn for human consumption, and practically all of the grain comes from the United States.

Juan Carlos Anaya, director general of GCMA, recalled that the country is self-sufficient in white corn, with an annual production of 20.5 million tons and a consumption of 18.7 million.

The little white corn that is imported, he said, is for the southeast, since it is cheaper to transport it from the United States by ship than to move it across the country by other means of transport. However, Anaya stressed that this government has failed to comply with the project to increase the corn harvest nationwide.

He recalled that the virtual president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, speaks of failure in this matter in her document 100 Steps for Transformation.

“In terms of agricultural, fishing and aquaculture production, in the period 2018-2023 the country did not achieve the objective of the National Development Plan to reduce dependence on imports of corn and other foods,” the document says.

In this regard, the director of the GCMA points out that this six-year term will be the first with a drop in corn production since the government of Ernesto Zedillo, with a drop of eight percent.

For this year alone, he said, 23.5 million tons of corn will be produced, a drop of more than four million tons compared to 2023.

In the case of yellow corn, production will increase from 3.6 to 3 million tons last year. He recalled that the country consumes 46 million tons of corn per year, so national production is enough to cover part of the internal needs.

Read more: Corn crop area reduced due to drought and low profitability

“It is almost impossible to increase the production of yellow corn because Mexico does not have the conditions. We rely on rainfed crops and as long as we continue our production with native Creole seed varieties, we will have low productivity.”

He added that Mexico lacks the capacity to increase its production of yellow corn, not to achieve self-sufficiency, but rather the security proposed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which is production at 70 percent of consumption.

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2024-07-05 11:00:00
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