{"id":9041,"date":"2024-10-23T13:31:55","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9041"},"modified":"2024-10-23T13:35:17","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:35:17","slug":"mexico-announces-food-and-agriculture-plan-that-could-take-the-country-back-to-the-1980s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=9041","title":{"rendered":"Mexico Announces Food and Agriculture Plan That Could Take the Country Back to the 1980s"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Mexico\u2019s new president announced an agriculture plan Tuesday that could make the country\u2019s food production and distribution look a lot more like it did in the 1980s, when meals in Mexico were dominated by tortillas, beans, instant coffee and cheap hot chocolate.<\/p>\n

Four decades ago, the ingredients for those meals were often bought at government stores that stocked a few basic goods.<\/p>\n

President Claudia Sheinbaum pledged Tuesday to revive those often shabby, limited government stores and continue efforts to achieve \u201cfood sovereignty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is about producing what we eat,\u201d Sheinbaum said of her policy, whose main focus will be on increasing bean and corn production.<\/p>\n

Sheinbaum appears to have a deep interest in boosting beans<\/a><\/span>. On Monday, she said, \u201cIt is much better to eat a bean taco than a bag of potato chips.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agriculture Secretary Julio Berdegu\u00e9 said the focus would be on guaranteeing prices for farmers who grow corn used for tortillas and lowering tortilla prices by 10%<\/a><\/span> after prices jumped a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n

The government aims to boost bean production by about 30% in six years to replace imports of beans, and will set up research centers to supply higher-yielding bean seeds.<\/p>\n

\u201cSelf-sufficiency in beans is a goal the president has set for us,\u201d Berdegu\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n

The government will also focus on supporting coffee production, but mainly for instant coffee, which it claims is used by 84% of Mexican households. The plan will also seek to support cocoa production, but mainly for powdered baking and hot chocolate, not fine chocolate bars.<\/p>\n

The policies appear to run counter to market trends and what Mexican food sales look like today, when consumption of most of the old basics has fallen.<\/p>\n

Most Mexicans today shop at modern grocery stores, and consumption of fresh ground coffee, not instant, has increased enormously, accompanied by a boom in specialized coffee chains and shops.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, bean consumption has been dropping precipitously for decades in Mexico. According to the government\u2019s \u201c2024 Agricultural Panorama\u201d report, Mexicans consume only about 17 pounds (7.7 kilograms) of beans annually. That\u2019s less than half of the 35.2 pounds (16 kilograms) consumed per year in 1980.<\/p>\n

A combination of factors, including the time it takes to cook dried beans, may be behind this. Amanda G\u00e1lvez, a researcher at Mexico\u2019s National Autonomous University, wrote that \u201cwe look down at beans because it is considered \u2018the food of the poor,\u2019 and we are making a serious mistake,\u201d because beans are a good source of protein.<\/p>\n

However, the health benefits aren\u2019t clear: The most common bean recipe in Mexico \u2014 refried beans \u2014 often contains a considerable dose of lard.<\/p>\n

Tortilla consumption has also fallen from nearly 220 pounds (100 kilograms) per capita annually in 2000 to about 165 pounds (75 kilograms) in 2024. Consumers have increasingly taken to buying bread and other bakery products instead of tortillas.<\/p>\n

Apart from the challenge of trying to change consumer habits, the policy also runs counter to market trends. While some countries are trying to encourage high-value varietal and specialized chocolate strains, Mexico is focusing on the cheapest products.<\/p>\n

While chocolate was first exported to the rest of the world from Mexico, Mexico\u2019s own production has fallen dramatically because of plant diseases and a lack of investment. It dropped from almost 50,000 tons in 2003 to about 28,000 tons in 2022.<\/p>\n

And while most Mexican homes may have a jar of instant coffee in their cupboards, that\u2019s not where the tendency \u2014 or consumer spending \u2014 is headed. According to a Technavio industry report, instant products accounted for only about 37% of the sales value of coffee in Mexico.<\/p>\n

Sheinbaum\u2019s focus on self-sufficiency in oil, energy and foodstuffs is a holdover from her predecessor and political mentor, former President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador, who left office on Sept. 30.<\/p>\n

L\u00f3pez Obrador also appears to have passed on his nostalgia for a 1970s-style Mexico<\/a><\/span> \u2014 including passenger rail service, state-owned industries, tight-knit families and small corner stores \u2014 to Sheinbaum.<\/p>\n

The agriculture plan comes one day after Sheinbaum announced a complete \u201cjunk food\u201d ban on salty, fried, processed snacks or sweetened beverages and soft drinks in schools, starting within six months.<\/p>\n

But the government\u2019s track record in actually changing consumer behavior is poor, columnist Javier Tejado wrote Tuesday in the newspaper El Universal. He reminded readers that the government banned junk food advertisements aimed at children in 2014.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result after ten years of prohibitions?\u201d Tejado wrote. \u201cThings are worse than when they started in 2014; Mexicans have decided to keep consuming things they like.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mexico\u2019s new president announced an agriculture plan Tuesday that could make the country\u2019s food production and distribution look a lot more like it did in the 1980s, when meals in Mexico were dominated by tortillas, beans, instant coffee and cheap hot chocolate. Four decades ago, the ingredients for those meals were often bought at government…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":9042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/379a8ed\/2147483647\/strip\/false\/crop\/4865x3404+0+0\/resize\/1486x1040!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2F25%2F5d%2Fa14b70ffcf6b7dcc2da11fc822e6%2F99389108425a406cac202399aa16f494","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy-infrastructure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9043,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9041\/revisions\/9043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}