The corn has begun to sprout on the hillsides south of Mexico’s capital, though it’s unclear whether these shoots will have enough water to grow or whether the farmer will be able to afford the increasingly expensive fertiliser.
What is known is that the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wants Mexicans to produce more of their own food in order to move toward self-sufficiency in key products and to control prices for basic foodstuffs. The president’s idea, which involves giving rural families cash payments to grow crops and technical advice, isn’t new, but the ravages of the pandemic, climate change and market turmoil created by the war in Ukraine have given it new urgency. The government wants to head off food insecurity in a country where 44 per cent of the population lives in poverty and where 27.5 million tons of corn are produced, but more than 40 million tons are consumed, according to government data.