Thursday, February 15, 2007
Thursday, February 15
After a day of working on a complicated lecture, I joined Rita and several LASOM students at Kinoki for the showing of two documentaries on the problems concerning Maize that are caused by the US government and corporations like Monsanto.
One problem is that very highly subsidized US Maize is being dumped on Mexico, and consumed because it is cheaper than locally produced Maize. As a result, whereas Mexico had produced more than 95% of the Maize it consumed, now the country produces about half of its Maize and the rest is US dumpage. This has caused nearly half of the campesinos to lose or give up their land and seek work in cities or in the US. This is all part of the plan, which is to create a dependency on US import of Maize, especially for a time when the price can be raised.
The second problem is that the Maize that comes to Mexico, some of which ends up as seed, is contaminated with Monsanto's transgenics. The aggressive dominance of these strains of Maize is likely to force out many of Mexico's native varities (this is where Maize was first domesticated and where it is most varied) resulting in globalized homogenization. The resulting Maize is nutritionally inferior as well.
There was a discussion after the documentaries, with some commentary by a local expert, as well as the owner of Kinoki theatre-and-restaurant, and another men.
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