Ana de Ita
The diversity of open-pollination seed varieties has been rapidly eroded in today’s world. Open pollination characterizes peasant seeds and enhances diversity, and is different from controlled pollination, in which the seeds of a crop originate from parents with known characteristics and are thus more likely to have homogeneous characteristics. Controlled-pollination varieties include hybrid seeds that are produced from two distant parent lines of the same species. The sowing of hybrid seeds yields the desired characteristics, but the resowing of the harvest from the hybrid seeds does not produce the characteristics of the parent and generally has a lower yield.
Globally, the progress of commercial agriculture is one of the main reasons for the loss of diversity of native and peasant seed breeds and varieties. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the erosion of biodiversity severely compromises world food security.1 During the last century, at least three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost; now only twelve crops are responsible for a major part of the world’s food requirement, and among these wheat, rice, and maize contribute 50 percent.
Mexico is one of the seventeen mega-diverse countries in the world, which together account for 75 percent of all the species of known vascular plants and living land animals. In Mexico there are around 65,000 species of fauna, flora, and fungi; besides this, 10 percent of the higher plants of the world are also found in Mexico and more than 40 percent are endemic to it.2 Mexico and the countries that form the cultural region of Mesoamerica are centers of origin for a large variety of cultivated plants, the result of a process of domestication and breeding of species carried out by farmers for around seven million years. The domestication of maize was the greatest achievement of the Mesoamerican civilization; and Mexico, besides being a center of origin, is also the center of diversification of the crop. Mexico is the center of origin of maize and there are a number of varieties depending on each producer, indigenous group, or climatic region.
Mesoamerican agriculture was based on diversity.
It was not about producing a lot with only one species of graminae or legume … but about producing a wide variety of crops and species in moderate quantities to take into account geographical, biotic diversity and annual climatic cycles, which were frequently erratic.
The food system of the indigenous peoples is based on a thousand to thousand five hundred species with their variants, while the global food system is centred around 15 species.3
Currently in Mexico, commercial and peasant seeds selected by farmers from their own harvest are resown in the subsequent cycle; these seeds are informally shared on a constant basis and have been conserved through generations. A main reason for agrodiversity in Mesoamerica is milpa, a traditional form of cultivation that combines maize, beans, and squash, and thus constitutes a diversified sowing system. Historically milpa has adapted to different environmental conditions, resulting in sixty more breeds and hundreds of maize varieties, all of them open-pollination varieties. The milpa system also protects wild plants that are being promoted such as tomatillo, chives, and large varieties of greens (amaranth greens, purslane, chipil, quelite cenizo); aromatic plants such as the epazote or basil; as well as medicinal plants such as pericón (the Mexican marigold), ruda, or arnica, which are either grown along the edges of plots or interspersed. Magueys, nopales, coffee, and various fruit trees may also be present as plot fencing or integrated into the plot. At the end of the maize cycle, sweet potato, yucca, or vines such as chayote and passionflower are also grown. By continuing this form of cultivation, agrodiversity is maintained and the traditional practices and knowledge that sustain this agrodiversity, along with open-pollination varieties, are also conserved.4
The country report presented to the FAO in 2006 highlights that unfortunately native diversity is suffering severe erosion owing, among other reasons, to the process of adoption of improved varieties, substitution of milpa crops with more remunerative crops, or due to the migration of rural people to cities and to the United States. According to the INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, 2002), in states with the largest production of maize, 70 percent of the surface is sown with improved variety seeds. In irrigated and rain-fed valleys with good annual precipitation conditions, native maize has been replaced by hybrid seeds. Given that hybrid seeds only maximize their yield in high-sowing densities, they impede the coexistence of other crops and militate against the diversity of the milpa. The increase in the use of herbicides has resulted in the disappearance of many local varieties and species of beans, squash, and quelites (green herbs).5 Lack of labor for weeding and the commercial promotion of herbicides have increased the use of agrochemicals in rural agriculture. Permanent or temporary migration of peasants from rural areas to cities reduces the diversity of seeds, which when no longer sown, are slowly lost forever.6
The FAO warned about the erosion of varieties and stated that of the varieties of maize existing in Mexico in 1930, only 20 percent remain. In the last fifty years, many populations of the Celaya and Tuxpeño breeds, known for their high productivity, were lost; so were Tuxpeño-Norteño, Apachito, Nal-Tel, Tehua, Jala, and Tuxpeño and Chalqueño varieties, as well as maize for special use.7 However, considering the overall population of farmers, the Census of 2007 recorded that 75.3 percent of all production units in the country sowed their own seeds, and in terms of the total agricultural land, 86 percent of it is sown with farmers’ seeds. The report of the Agro-food and Fisheries Information Service in 2009 indicated that native maize was sown in 85 percent of the agricultural surface of the country, in 7.2 million hectares of rain-fed land, by farmers who own less than five hectares. The cultivation is done in a large variety of agroecological zones at altitudes ranging from 0 to 4,000 meters, from the equator to higher latitudes in the two hemispheres, and in regions with precipitation of less than 40 mm to 3,000 mm a year, in soils and climates that are very variable.8
In an analysis of native varieties of maize in Mexico, it was discovered that although there were new high yielding varieties available and supported by the government, farmers continued to maintain complex populations of native varieties in order to deal with environmental heterogeneity, combat the effects of plague and disease, comply with cultural and ritual necessities, and satisfy their dietary preferences. Hernández Xolocotzi and Ortega postulate that the higher the degree of cultural erosion and disorganization, the greater the level of erosion of open-pollination varieties.9
The decade of the 1940s marked the beginning of the Green Revolution, a project that was started under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation that emphasized increasing production in the private sector of Mexican agriculture. This would be based on research and promotion of a technology package that sought to adapt seeds used in the United States to local soils, as well as the utilization of a suitable mix of insecticides and fertilizers and the efficient use of water. In the beginning, the research was restricted to maize and wheat; later it included bean (1949), potato (1952), fruit and vegetables (1953), sorghum, barley, and fodder legumes (1954), and livestock (1956), which heightened the dichotomy between subsistence agriculture and commercial agriculture.10
The Green Revolution tended to concentrate the benefits in a small business sector that had good irrigated lands, at the cost of the majority of the nation’s farmer population. Moreover, by focusing on a type of research designed for conditions different from those in Mexico, it cast aside research that was already being done for the improvement of the maize production in traditional Mexican regions.11
In the 1940s, two types of research programs clashed with each other. The first, with improved open-pollination varieties, had the advantage of permanence as the farmer could allocate a part of his harvest for sowing in the following year, as was done by traditional farmers; the other, which was imposed by the Office of Special Studies (OEE in Spanish) under the management and funding of the Rockefeller Foundation, aimed at greater yields through the introduction of hybrids of exceptional productivity, but only in the first sowing. In subsequent sowings the productivity could be even lower than the yield obtained with ordinary seeds. Besides, the high productivity of hybrid seed depended on its capacity to respond well to fertilizers, which in turn require a regular and abundant water supply, that is to say, irrigation. While the Institute of Agricultural Research (IIA in Spanish) worked to obtain improved maize seeds for areas of small traditional cultivation, OEE preferred to focus on the production of very high yield seeds, meant for irrigated regions and for producers with substantial resources. In 1948, approximately 80 percent of maize-cultivation land, sown with improved varieties, was of open-pollination varieties. Around 1956, the seed production program of the Secretary of Agriculture dedicated 96 percent of its capacity to hybrids, that is, the commercial production of maize.
The Green Revolution found its principal promoter in the Mexican state. Hybrids would have had very little impact without the buildup of strong investment in irrigation, extension of credit, support for agricultural extension agents, guaranteed prices, and the creation of an infrastructure for the storage of grains, agriculture insurance, support for mechanization, etc. From the end of the 1950s onward, the state controlled public research through the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA in Spanish) and later through the National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural, and Livestock Research (INIFAP). A state company, the National Seed Producer (PRONASE), had exclusive rights over the development of public research centers, and was engaged in commercially reproducing and distributing the varieties of maize, bean, rice, and oil seeds developed by them.
In the 1960s there was a process of reorganization of the seed industry through the national system for Production, Certification and Marketing of Seeds, based on which all work associated with the research, qualification, production, benefit, and certification of seeds, as well as the distribution, sale, and utilization of certified seeds, was considered a public utility (although not a state monopoly). However, at the same time there was a significant expansion of the national private and foreign industry in the production of improved seeds.12
Until 1980, private companies were restricted to the production and marketing of seeds, with very little participation in improvements. The change in policy and in adjustment programs (1982) marked the beginning of the end of PRONASE, which was dismantled in 2007 once its production and market share had reduced drastically in the early years of the 2000s. The Seed Law of 1991 encouraged the participation of national and foreign private companies and ended the preferential access given to PRONASE to INIFAP varieties, which could now also go to private companies. The seeds produced by the private sector were meant for irrigated areas with good rainy seasons, whereas those produced by PRONASE were meant for other cultivated areas.13
The Mexican seed industry is formed by individual farmers, large transnational companies, private national companies, national institutes for research and production of seeds, such as INIFAP, and international research centers such as the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). After the disappearance of PRONASE, transnational seed companies penetrated the Mexican market and also increased the import of seeds. According to Ayala and Schwentesius,14 although there are around thirty major companies—Agroproductos Monsanto, Syngenta Seeds, Sakata Seed de México, Semillas Berentsen, Ahern Internacional de México, Bio Internacional Genética de Semillas, Bonnita Seed, Red Gold Seeds, Mar Seed Company, Semillas Conlee Mexicana, Semillas del Río Colorado, Semillas Mejoradas de México, Semillas Western, and others—foreign companies predominate in the seed market by managing more than 90 percent of the capital.
The Mexican Seed Association (AMSAC) reports that the value of the seed market in Mexico is around $1 billion. About twenty transnational and national companies control 80 percent of the market, with the remaining 20 percent accounted for by producer associations, which market seeds. Mexico imports its entire vegetable seed requirement, worth about $200 to $250 million, while between 60 and 70 percent of the sale of maize seeds is done by transnational companies.15
Improved seeds are a basic input in commercial production areas, with very high yields and in continuous growth. For example, in Sinaloa, in high-productivity, irrigated zones, almost all maize producers sow hybrid seeds supplied by four companies: Pioneer, Asgrow, DeKalb, and Monsanto. The only Mexican maize seed company, Ceres, ceased to be competitive in the northeastern region because of low yields when compared with transnational ones.16 Producers say the cost of seed is very high and its useful life has been reduced to three years, due to market competition.
Between 1996 and 2001, through the Kilo por Kilo program, the government sought to increase the use of certified maize seeds, from varieties produced by state research centers and intended for those areas with good production. However, the program also distributed seeds without certification, poorly suited to local conditions; instead of the expected increase in yield, they resulted in the disappearance of many criollo or native varieties.17
Given the global food price crisis in 2007, the Mexican government set up a program for small producers from the central and southern states of the country, where the majority of small-scale farmers producing for their own consumption are located, and who still use the milpa and peasant seed sowing system. This program aims at increasing the yield of the maize and bean crop with the help of technology packages validated by INIFAP, with the use of improved seeds, population densities, and sowing and fertilization. Once again and in spite of this causing the erosion of varieties of basic crops and their importance in terms of food security, the Mexican government allocated its financial resources to replacing milpa and peasant, native, or criollo varieties with commercial hybrid varieties, produced by transnational companies, along with the inputs required for their production. The government is now focusing on opening new markets for the seed and inputs companies, instead of promoting an increase in yield based on improvement of peasant varieties, the enriching of soils, and the use of organic manure, which will reduce farmers’ dependence on industrial inputs.
Since 1996 the Mexican government has subsidized the acceptance of transgenic cotton seeds from Monsanto through the Alliance for the Countryside (Alianza para el Campo) program; the government paid for the license and part of the cost of seeds for those farmers who agreed to buy transgenic seeds.
A couple of years ago, through the Productive Reconversion Program, the Mexican government once again subsidized Monsanto by giving a subsidy to producers with low maize yield wishing to sow transgenic soy. The government has authorized the sowing of transgenic soy in 253,000 hectares in the Yucatán Peninsula, in Chiapas, and in the Potosina, Veracruz, and Tamaulipeca Huastecana regions. The majority of producers in Chiapas and the Yucatán Peninsula are small indigenous producers (Mayas, Tzeltales, Tzotziles) who cultivate in the milpa system for their own consumption, with few chemical inputs, in small parcels of land of less than four hectares, with their own seeds of native varieties. These farmers are also beekeepers. Subsidized transgenic soy is an attempt to expand cultivation to these areas, but it has been met with resistance by farmers and environmental organizations, who have filed various appeals against the authorization for sowing granted to Monsanto.
In 2007, the Federal Law on the Production, Certification and Marketing of Seeds was passed, replacing the 1991 Seed Law. After some effective lobbying, the seed industry was able to modify a legislative initiative that attempted to give the state a priority role. In its place, it promoted a seed law that outlaws the exchange and sale of farmers’ seeds and reinforces the interest of the private seed industry to a greater degree than the law of 1991. The privatization of seeds is a global trend, and new laws promoted in different countries are oriented toward this. The Federal Law on the Production, Certification and Marketing of Seeds (2007) openly attacks peasant seeds and attempts to classify them as illegal and pirate. Although the new seed law does not go to the European extreme of charging farmers a percentage for resowing with seeds from their own harvest, it does prohibit the sale or exchange of peasant seeds.
The 2007 law is said to apply to all types of seeds, including varieties of common use defined as: “Those used by rural communities, whose origin is the result of their practices, uses and customs.” It is part of a group of laws that were drafted by large federations of seed companies who came together under what is called the International Seed Federation (ISF). In Mexico, the ISF is represented by AMSAC, which is the Mexican Association of Seed Producers, AC, an association that has very little to do with the Mexican reality. It defines itself as follows:
AMSAC is an association which brings together the entire seed sector in Mexico, which has power to influence government decisions, participate in laws and norms and is recognized for its services and infrastructure to resolve the issues of its members.
Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont or Pioneer, Vilmorin Inc., and various other transnational companies are members of AMSAC.
The Mexican Seed Law faithfully complies with the objectives set by this transnational federation.18 It lays down, by virtue of Article 34 and some others, that all seeds need to be either from the farmer’s own production or purchased. There is no other alternative. Exchanging or gifting of seeds is now considered illegal and there is no exception to this. In Articles 33 and 34 it requires that any seed that is “marketed or placed into circulation,” that is to say, exchanged, lent, gifted, purchased, or sold, “… should carry a label on the packaging with the details required by the Official Mexican Standard.” The Seed Law of 1991, on the other hand, made an exception for peasant seeds. “The free marketing or circulation of seeds that are neither certified nor verified shall not be restricted.”19
A second imposition is the concept that good-quality seeds should be uniform, that is, equal and invariable and also stable, that is, unchanged with time. This means that in a country like Mexico, native seeds are being forced to stop evolving in one way or another. Peasant seeds and seeds from Mexican indigenous peoples have survived only because they have been evolving. The strategic objective of the National System of Seeds of Mexico is that by the year 2025, 60 percent of seeds should be certified and all the certified seeds should be protected by patents.20
At present almost 80 percent of producers sow their own native or criollo seeds. Many farmers are used to sowing small quantities of hybrid seeds to promote the strength of their native varieties, and by crossing native and hybrid varieties they “creolize” them. This practice will be prohibited with progress in patent protection, as companies will claim payment for improved genetic material that may be in the criollo seeds, as in the case of Europe with its “compulsory voluntary contribution,” although they have never had to pay for peasant seeds, which are the patrimony of the human race, and on which they made their improvements. In Mexico improved seeds have not progressed despite more than seventy years of the Green Revolution, given that there are no varieties for each of the ecological niches in which maize is sowed, and for which farmers have adapted seeds over seven thousand years of farming. Besides this, the dietary and ritual uses of maize in Mexico cannot be met by a reduced number of hybrid maize varieties; they require the cultivation of various varieties and species associated with them. Hybrid maize, in spite of the fact that it can increase the harvest on hillsides and rain-fed areas, with less use of fertilizers, is still not able to guarantee the food security of rural families as it cannot be stored for a large part of the year; in fact, within a few months, it is attacked by insects, unlike native or criollo maize that families in rural areas store from one year to the next and use slowly over time as food.
The transgenic contamination of native maize has become a reality in Mexico starting in 2001, caused by the import of seeds from the United States that contain a transgenic maize blend. The imported transgenic maize was distributed in rural communities by the Diconsa state stores, which led to the spread of contamination to various regions, many of them indigenous, which cultivate maize to eat, and which considered the invasion of transgenes as contamination of the seeds inherited from their ancestors. This contamination occurred in spite of the existence of a moratorium on the experimental or commercial sowing of transgenic maize, as Mexico is among the countries that form the cultural region of Mesoamerica, the center of origin and diversification of maize.
The Mexican state has systematically sought to make rural production disappear, promoting programs for productive reconversion to commercial crops; preventing sowing on hillsides or the traditional practices of slash-and-burn agriculture; and promoting the replacement of native seeds with commercial hybrids. It has also played a pivotal role by strengthening legislative mechanisms favoring patents and the interests of private corporations and transgenic crops. The Law on Biosafety of Genetically Modified Organisms was approved in 2005 and favors transnational corporations, as it only defines the steps to be followed in order that transgenic crops may be approved. It does not penalize corporations when they contaminate native varieties or distribute transgenic seeds illegally, and it paved the way for lifting the de facto moratorium, in effect since 1998, on the experimental or commercial sowing of transgenic maize. In 2012, Congress tried to approve a law on vegetable varieties that would favor transnational companies, but opposition by farmers’ organizations, led by the National Union of Autonomous Regional Farmer Organizations (UNORCA), a member of Via Campesina, resulted in the initiative being rejected.
In spite of the efforts of the government and seed production and agrochemical corporations to destroy the rural economy and the users of peasant, native, or criollo seed varieties, farmers have resisted, in order to continue with their way of life, sowing, and culture. Indigenous and rural communities have resisted by continuing to maintain the milpa system as the form of cultivation that ensures the family’s food sovereignty. Many communities do not use the hybrid seeds distributed by the government; the more advanced have ensured that the government changes the industrial technology packages that it subsidizes into support for native and criollo seeds and organic inputs. Given the declaration of the transgenic contamination of native varieties of maize, organizations requested the help of the Center for Studies for Change in the Mexican Countryside (CECCAM) to carry out its own diagnoses on native maize varieties. They declared collectively, as the Network in Defense of Maize, that they would not use seeds from outside the communities, not sow maize distributed by the Diconsa state stores, nor maize brought by immigrants. They would not buy hybrid seeds, and only exchange seeds with known persons, check their lands, and remove weeds or destroy maize plants that seemed unnatural or deformed. Later they learned to conduct a rural study to sample their lands and identify the presence of transgenics in them. The ejidos have sought to make progress by using the agreements of the assembly—a community institution that allows autonomous decision making on the land and its resources—to prohibit, via an agreement made between the ejido members and the co-proprietors, the sowing of transgenic crops or hybrid seeds in their territories.
These communities also continue to maintain an active interest in recovering scarce varieties. They conduct seed exchange fairs where farmers acquire different seed varieties suited to their region. The fairs combine the savoring of traditional dishes cooked with native varieties, with conferences and theoretical presentations on the seed situation the world over and in the country, and also have traditional music and dances.
Native seeds cannot be stored in isolation, without maintaining the way of life and culture that gives them meaning. The only way to maintain and protect the diversity of plants and varieties is to promote the indigenous rural economy.
1. FAO, “Biodiversity to Curb World’s Food Insecurity,” Global Conference on Biological Diversity in Bonn, Germany, 2008.
2. CONABIO, SEMARNAT, Estrategia Nacional sobre Biodiversidad de México (Mexico: Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad, Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales, 2000), 14, www.conabio.gob.mx/conocimiento/estrategia_nacional/doctos/pdf/ENB.pdf.
3. J. Caballero, “Exploración de Recursos Genéticos Potenciales,” in Memorias del Seminario sobre Investigación Genética Básica en el Conocimiento y Evaluación de los Recursos Genéticos, eds. H. Palomino and E. Pimienta (Mexico: Jardín Botánico de la UNAM, Somefi, 1985), 28–40, cited in Boege Eckart, El Patrimonio Biocultural de los Pueblos Indígenas de México. Hacia la Conservación in situ de la Biodiversidad y Agrodiversidad en los Territorios Indígenas (Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas, 2010), 21.
4. Eckart, El Patrimonio Biocultural de los Pueblos Indígenas de México, 220.
5. T. A. Kato et al., Origen y Diversificación del Maíz: Una Revisión Analítica (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad, 2009), 116.
6. Iván Hernández Baltazar, “La Milpa y la Agrodiversidad en la Economía Campesina” (Mexico, 2012).
7. E. Hernández Xolocotzi and R. Ortega, Variación en Maíz y Cambios Socioeconómicos en Chiapas, México, 1946–1971 (Mexico: Avances en la Ensenanza y la Investigación, Colegio de Posgraduados, Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, 1973), 11–12.
8. L. M. Mera and C. Mapes, “El Maíz, Aspectos Biológicos,” in Kato et al., Origen y Diversificación del Maíz, 22.
9. Hernández Xolocotzi and Ortega, Variación en Maíz y Cambios Socioeconómicos en Chiapas, 12.
10. Cynthia Hewitt de Alcántara, La Modernización de la Agricultura Mexicana, 1940–1970, 7th ed. (Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores, 1999), 36.
11. Ana de Ita and Pilar López Sierra, “La Cultura Maicera Mexicana Frente al Libre Comercio,” in Maíz: Sustento y Culturas en América Latina. Los Impactos Destructivos de la Globalización (Montevideo: REDES–AT Uruguay, Biodiversidad—Sustento y Culturas, 2004), 13.
12. Ibid., 15.
13. Ana de Ita, “Semillas Campesinas entre el Estado y las Transnacionales,” in Semillas del Hambre; Ilegalizar la Memoria Campesina (Mexico: CECCAM, 2010), 38.
14. A. V. Ayala and R. Schwentesius, Las Semillas Mejoradas (Mexico: Centro de Investigaciones Económicas, Sociales y Tecnológicas de la Agroindustria y la Agricultura Mundial (CIESTAAM), de la Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, 2009), cited in “Producción y Comercio de Semillas en México,” 2000Agro Revista Industrial del Campo, www.2000agro.com.mx/agroindustria/produccion-y-comercio-de-semillas-en-mexico/.
15. Ernesto Perea, “Mercado de Semillas, Negocio que Germina y Crece,” Imagen Agropecuaria, March 23, 2009.
16. Ana de Ita, “Semillas Campesinas entre el Estado y las Transnacionales,” 43–44.
17. George A. Dyer et al., “Dispersal of Transgenes through Maize Seed Systems in Mexico,” PLoS ONE Open Access 4, no. 5 (2009).
18. GRAIN, “La Nueva Ley de Semillas de México (2007),” in La Semillas del Hambre: Ilegalizar la Memoria Campesina (Mexico: CECCAM, 2010), 19.
19. Ana de Ita, “Semillas Campesinas entre el Estado y las Transnacionales,” 31.
20. GRAIN, “La Nueva Ley de Semillas de México (2007),” 23.