maiz

Maize in Mexico is a

highly politicised food

item with deep

cultural and spiritual

meaning, intricately

connected to Mexico’s

history, as well as to

culinary and

agronomic resistance

Maize is the main

staple food in

Mexico.

3 million farmers

cultivate this crop,

of which 70% are

peasants.

Corn uses more than 60% of total

cultivated surface and it’s production

involves roughly 20% of total active

population.

Most of all

farms grow

white maize

for human

consumption

which contributes

with 59% of

the daily caloric intake for

Mexicans.

Around 300 million tortillas are

consumed every day in Mexico. The

value of the maize-tortilla chain

production translates into 1% of the

GDP.

Maize was domesticated in Mesoamerica from its wild relative teosintle around 9,000 years ago.

Centers of origin of crop plants

The eight Vavilovian Centers of Origin for crop plants.

MESOAMERICA’S CROP LEGACYTO THE WORLD

.

The evolution of maize

• Indigenous farmers were and are partners with the maize, not its engineers. This is what is called “peasant improvement” or “native improvement” and the result of this process is one of the greatest human inventions: maize.

Maize diversity

• This long human-plant coexistence made possible the development of a huge diversity.

In Mexico today there

are more than fifty maize families of local varieties, each of which may have many cultivars or cultivated varieties.

As many as 5 thousand cultivars may exit in Mexico

The Mesoamerican civilization was strengthened upon the field crop of maize; through harvesting it, its religious and spiritual importance and how it impacted their diet. Maize formed the Mesoamerican people’s identity.

CORN & HISTORY

They attempted to make man of mud, but man could neither move nor speak. After destroying the mud men, they tried again by creating wooden creatures that could speak but had no soul or blood. Angered over the flaws in their creation, they destroyed them by tearing them apart. In their final attempt, the “True People” were made out of corn.

The God of Maiz had

three main traits that

would perpetuate and

developed throughout

all Mesoamerica:

Fertility

axis mundi

maximum authority

The oldest representations of the God of Maiz are related with fertility, renaissance, abundance, wealth and the incessant recreation of life. On the fields, in the temples and palaces, on their big steales or on the simplest earthen vessel the ancients carved or painted the image of the seed, the cob or the whole plant like one of the different incarnations of fertility.

Corn meant so much for ancient Mesoamericans that this plant came to be the “axis of their world”, the “cosmic tree” that integrates all the plains and levels of the universe. This can be clearly seen on the Foliated Cross of Palenque.

Rulers or governors are usually depicted with attributes of the God of Maiz. The kernels, the cob or the symbols of maize appeared on the royal bands or the headdresses of the rulers conveying them a divine nature. Rulers are an incarnation of the God of Maiz, in their mortal bodies lie the regenerative forces of nature thus the royal power had the eternal qualities of Nature cycles.

CORN & NAFTA

Maize is the single largest food crop in the world, and in spite of its enormous nutritious value, only

21% of this massive production goes to human consumption.

Mexico is the second country in annual consumption of corn per capita (127 kg), after Malawi.

U.S.42%

China19%

Brasil7%

Mexico3%

Other29%

WORLD CORN PRODUCTION, 2009-2010

Feed and Residual

43%

Exports16%

Ethanol32%

HFCS4%

Other5%

US CORN USAGE BY SEGMENT, 2009

Tortilla47%

Feed 31%

Otros12%

Industria 10%

MEXICAN CORN USAGE BY SECTOR, 2009

On january 1st 1994 the corn sector was totally and immediately opened to US producers. The rhetoric about a fifteen year transition period for corn with a tariff free quota system was only that, rhetoric.

Under Nafta, the US now sells between six and eight million tonnes of maize to Mexico every year. The flooding of the Mexican market with highly subsidised maize produced in the US plummeted prices for Mexican producers. Although white maize is preferred because of quality and cultural reasons for making tortillas, market prices are set by the international price of the United States yellow corn grade 2

It is important to emphasize that tortilla prices increased by a factor of 5 since the NAFTA entered into force, while subsidies to the industrial flour industries (specially the two largest firms, MASECA and MINSA) increased and almost doubled during NAFTA’s first five years.

The 3 million farmers who grow maize in Mexico have been deemed inefficient in comparison with corn farmers in the US.

Multi-million subsidies and technology make it impossible to compete, when 70% are small-scale farmers endowed with very small plots of land (averaging less than 2 hectares),little or no access to credit, limited or minimum use of chemical inputs and usually no employment of mechanical traction.

And yet, these peasants are accountable for 67% of the national production, contributing to conserve at the same time the vast and vital agrodiversity of maize. The most important technological asset at their disposal is the genetic variability of their corn.

Mexico’s corn growers perform a critical and unrecognized environmental service of vital importance as the curators of the rich genetic variability attained by corn in Mexico. This precious germplasm has contributed in a decisive manner to global production of corn. Even the dented varieties of the U.S. Corn Belt are close descendants of the first Mexican landraces.

Over half of the maize area planted in the United States has been genetically modified. The US currently uses transgenic seeds in 40% of the maize it exports to Mexico, which is a serious threat for the ability of Mexican growers to conserve and develop the diversity of maize.

Between 1995 and 2006, the US government paid out $56 billion in corn subsidies. In terms of synthetic and mined fertilizers, the corn crop sucks in nearly 40% of all nitrogen fertilizer applied in the United States, and upwards of 30% of phosphorous and potash. Such voracious use of fertilizers causes all manner of ecological trouble.

In summary, the impact of the “neo-liberal maize regime” and NAFTA on maize production has been dramatic: the price of maize has decreased, rural poverty has increased leading to migration, and the price of tortillas has increased while their quality has decreased.

CORN & CULTURE

In rural Mexico, especially central and southern regions with predominant indigenous communities, maize is not only a staple; against all odds, it remains to be the axismundi of their culture.

The original milpa it’s not only a maize field but a native agro-technology ruled by the principle of “harmonic coexistence” between the two or three different plants that share the field in a premeditated way in order to improve the crop and the soil. The maize is planted along with beans and/or squashes. The beans plant uses the maize plant for support and in turn this one provides nitrogen to the soil, and squashes provide ground cover to stop weeds and inhibit evaporation by providing shade over the soil.

Family units of small-scale production and consumption commonly grow corn, beans, vegetables and other crops mainly for their own, and what they have in excess, they sell to the government or local markets.

Corn’s cultural relevance can also be seen in the care and storage of the crop, from the manual threshing of the cob to the selection of seeds and their storage in the house or in cuescomates.

The traditional process to make tortillas represents a ritual in itself from the preparation of nixtamal, to the grinding of the dough and the correct cooking of each torilla on the comal.

As the tortilla making process was industrialised, tortillerías stopped using the nixtamal process, a Mesoamerican culinary invention that transforms the nutrient content of maize to enable nutrients to be better absorbed by the human digestive system. The maize is soaked with lime and then ground into masa or maize dough, which is used to make a variety of dishes and drinks. Tortilla production, since the mid 1970s, has replaced the masa with ground maize flour, which is nutritionally inferior.

Rural communities have an integral use of the plant: from the roots and stumps for fertilizers or fuel, to the stalk in crafts and in the construction; from the leaves or foliation to wrap tamales or cigarrettes to the bare cob as fuel or animal food, or threshing tool, or wood polisher or bottle cork.

Traditional Mexican Food is based in corn: elotes,esquites, pozole, huitlacoche (Corn smut a fungal disease known in Mexico as huitlacoche, which is prized by some as a gourmet delicacy in itself.), tostadas, tamales, atole, tejate, tejuino, quesadillas, gorditas, tlacoyos, pinole, etc.