Price Guarantee; making the necessary possible | Article

Alberto Vizcarra Ozuna

The phrase that “politics is the art of the possible” has taken root in areas dominated by political pragmatism. A slogan that serves to upstage or discard what is needed when the realities of power deem it impossible. This is kind of how the government responds to national producers of major cereals when, given the fall in world prices for wheat and corn, they demand that the prices of such commodities not be quoted in speculative markets that compete on the stock exchange. , from Chicago. The government’s response is that what they demand is necessary, but it is not possible because trade agreements (NAFTA-TMEC) have been signed that prevent us from protecting national grain production.

When the limits of the possible mean the death of a vital and strategic sector of the national economy, such as the national production of wheat and corn, then a healthy irreverence for what is considered impossible is required. Apart from the fact that the government may not want to do this, it is up to the national producers to make it clear to the population that it is necessary to wage a social and political struggle with sufficient force to get the main crops out of uncertainty, international speculative markets and a return to the protection schemes they used in over a period of almost half a century, from 1934 to 1982.

An indispensable tool to achieve this is “Price Guarantees” introduced during the six-year term of Lázaro Cárdenas as an imitation of the success of this policy created by the government of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States called “The Parity Price”. The restoration of this pricing policy requires a complete rethinking of Mexico’s food policy, which begins with a revision of what was agreed in this regard in NAFTA-TEMES, which unduly threw the national grain market into a competition scheme with giants. most of the global food market.

Some government voices that come from the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Finance, with the consent of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, are those who push the view that such free trade and neoliberal policies cannot be. provide regression. The idea that what has been done cannot be undone because a treaty has been signed that establishes rules set by financial and commercial powers against which Mexico has no power. A kind of fatal belief: we should die according to the rules, and not fight to change these rules. Otherwise, we cannot do what is necessary and functional, but only what is possible, even if it ruins us.

After the abandonment of economic policies that protected the national production of basic grains, which began in the mid-1980s, national production has declined, and we remain one of the world’s major food importers. We import rice, wheat, corn, beans, and other products, while at the same time supporting ourselves in the absurdity of maintaining a “commercial agriculture” that exports grains that we will later have to import. The goal of food self-sufficiency is only a symbolic memory in the discourse of the traditional politician.

The current crisis in wheat and corn due to exponential cost increases and falling prices points to a systemic failure that needs to be corrected from the start. The producers of Sinaloa clearly identify the cause of the problem and demand what is necessary from the government, although officials believe this is impossible. They are demanding that corn be taken off the Chicago Stock Exchange and price guarantees restored to match national production costs. The same will need to be done with wheat when drawing up a national plan for the production of basic cereals with specific physical goals to meet the needs of domestic consumption and protect the country from the ongoing world food crisis.

The present and future of food in Mexico cannot continue on the Chicago Stock Exchange. Financial powers exercising control over goods grains, they do not see them as the food of the people, such goods are synonymous with money, speculation and food addiction. They hide behind supply and demand as if it were an ethical value that determines prices, when in fact they are corporate entities that speculate on the rise and fall of prices, always causing losses to those who produce and to nations that depend on markets, for which they work. control. This applies to corn, which has fallen in price by more than 40 percent, while, according to the FAO, not a glut of grain is reported, but a drop in world production by more than 50 million tons. this year’s harvest compared to last year.

Times of crisis mark a time when what is needed must be made possible. The Mexican government must reject the slave syndrome, which understood the need for freedom, but at the same time considered it impossible, and also reject the absurd proposals that we should not produce grain because “this is not a business.” And national producers must get out of the illusion that in a free market they will someday be able to win the lottery, although for more than forty years “they have not been lucky.” The time has come when the ship’s sails stop adjusting to the winds that lead us to a safe shipwreck.