A week and a half ago, according to Mexican media reports, a federal district judge issued an injunction suspending field trials of genetically modified (GM) corn. It’s been illegal to grow GM corn for consumption in Mexico since 1998, so the decision effectively means no one can grow genetically modified varieties of Mexico’s national crop for any reason.
Contrast this with what’s happening in Brazil. There, Embrapa, the national agricultural research and development institute, is going full tilt on a project to bring to market a bean genetically modified to fight off the golden mosaic virus, a plague that, according to the Financial Times, costs the country 8% of its average annual bean crop—beans are as ubiquitous on Brazilian dinner plates as corn tortillas are in Mexico. Some 85% of Brazil’s soy crop is already GM, and the country’s Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira (CTC) is working on genetically engineered varieties of sugarcane, another major crop.
It’s no secret that there’s a debate over genetically modified foods (also called genetically modified organisms, or GMOs). Still, it’s striking to see Latin America’s biggest economic engines going in such different directions on the issue. Throw the U.S. into the mix, and you begin to see just how many ways people can disagree about the acceptability of tinkering with DNA in search of higher yields and hardier plants.
In the U.S., it’s ag giants like Monsanto and commodity corn, cotton and soy farmers on one side, and organic farmers and the people who like to buy their produce on the other. The debate is playing out right now mostly in state ballot initiatives on whether to require that foods with GM ingredients be labeled as such on store shelves. In Mexico, corn in particular is at the center of the conversation: the crop was born there, and that fact is deeply bound up in the nation’s sense of itself. There’s a patriotic fervor around protecting the “landraces,” the many distinctive local varietals of the crop, and so the threat of genetic contamination of maize looms particularly large. ”There are lots of social issues, religious issues, ethical issues, philosophical issues, even, that arise any time you want to talk about corn in Mexico,” says Jose Falck-Zepeda, an agricultural economist at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Genetic modification in crops without that special sociocultural significance hasn’t merited the same amount of outrage. Mexico allows the commercial cultivation, for example, of GM soybeans and cotton, Falck-Zepeda points out.
Interestingly, Brazil, a country with an unabashedly leftist government, has embraced GMOs with a vengeance. Partly that’s because Brazilian farmers, lacking the sort of subsidies and price supports that the U.S. government showers on its politically important farming class, are more price-sensitive when it comes to things like seeds, pesticides and herbicides. Brazilian farmers have that much more reason to embrace seeds that yield more, or require less pesticide and herbicide, as some GM varietals do, says Mark Langevin, the director of Brazilworks and an international advisor to the Brazilian Cotton Producers Association. And the Brazilian government has made it a priority to attain energy independence through sugarcane ethanol, which is driving genetic modification programs like the one at CTC, a giant biofactory.
These pressures don’t always push toward GM crops: Brazilian farmers and researchers are also exploring traditional hybrid crops, but according to Langevin they’ve created more of an openness to use GMOs as part of the agricultural arsenal. Brazil is a commodities exporting powerhouse. Much of its produce ends up in China, but some of it goes to Mexico, including corn. Mexico, while it bans the cultivation of GM corn, allows its import. It doesn’t have much choice in the matter, since it’s a net corn importer. The birthplace of corn—where much of the crop is still grown on small farms using artisanal landraces—doesn’t grow enough of it to meet its own demand.
