•  mexico city
• Monday, January 24, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Farmers' protests and the rise in corn tortilla prices in late December put temporary brakes on the Mexican Senate, which was preparing to lift the national ban on utilising maize to make fuel alcohol, or ethanol.

The policy shift is included in the bio-energy bill that former senator Mario López Valdez had pushed for two years. He is now governor of the northwestern state of Sinaloa. The bill was approved in committee by all political parties and presented to the Senate on Dec. 9.

The non-governmental campaign 'Sin Maíz No Hay País' (roughly, 'without maize, there is no Mexico') issued an alert against the legislation, which ultimately was put on hold, while in the last days of 2010 the price of the corn tortilla -- a staple in the Mexican diet -- shot up 50 percent.

Stopping the legislative effort were the senators of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is intent on recovering the presidency in 2012, held by the conservative National Action Party (PAN) for the last two terms. 'The problem remains, though dormant, because there are many interests of (ethanol-producing) companies in the United States, Colombia and Brazil,' Víctor Suárez, executive director of the National Association of Rural Commercialisation Enterprises (ANEC), told Tierramérica.

According to the federal government, Mexico imports 10 million tonnes of yellow maize annually, using it for livestock feed. It meets 30 percent of the national demand at a cost of 3 billion dollars, according to Sin Maíz No Hay País. The insufficient national maize production was one of the reasons for the 2008 authorisation to cultivate genetically modified maize in Mexico, the cradle of this millennia-old grain.

The law bans the use of maize to make ethanol when there is a production deficit. The reform aims to replace the national ban with a regional approach, such that states with surplus maize, like Sinaloa -- where an ethanol plant is already operating, run on imported maize -- can shift it from the food market to the biofuel production market.

The argument in favour of the initiative is that the reform would benefit the small farmers in those regions, because it would allow them to sell their maize freely, without endangering Mexico's food security. Furthermore, the reasoning goes, it would reduce reliance on fossil fuels because ethanol -- utilised as a substitute for or complement to gasoline in automotive transport -- emits less climate-changing gases into the atmosphere.

The federal authorities would be entrusted with regulating maize-based ethanol in case of food emergencies, yield fluctuations or other phenomena that could lead to maize shortages or stockpiling, periodically reviewing the grain's supply.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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