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institute for agriculture and trade policy
In 'Assault' on Mexican Food Sovereignty, US Ramps Up Fight Over GM Corn
"U.S. agribusiness exporters, the biotech industry, and their allies in Congress are pushing this case, intent on compelling Mexico to accept U.S. exports without debate," said one expert.
Aug 17, 2023
After two-and-a-half months of failed negotiations, the U.S. government on Thursday intensified its effort to quash Mexico's limits on genetically modified corn imports by calling for the formation of a dispute settlement panel under a North American trade deal.
In a 2020 decree backed by agricultural, consumer, environmental, public health, and worker groups, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) announced plans to phase out genetically modified (GM) corn and the herbicide glyphosate by January 2024.
Under pressure from the U.S. government and impacted industries, he issued a new decree in February reiterating plans to block GM corn imports for human consumption by then but lifting the deadline for imports intended for livestock feed and industrial use.
"The Mexican government will show what has occurred: Its cherished tortillas are being contaminated with glyphosate and GM corn. And they intend to put a stop to that."
While AMLO's move was seen as a concession to the U.S. and lobbyists challenging his policies, the Biden administration in June still requested 75 days of formal negotiations. After talks ended Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai confirmed the decision to form a panel under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
"Through the USMCA dispute panel, we seek to resolve our concerns and help ensure consumers can continue to access safe and affordable food and agricultural products," Tai said Thursday. "It is critical that Mexico eliminate its USMCA-inconsistent biotechnology measures so that American farmers can continue to access the Mexican market and use innovative tools to respond to climate and food security challenges. Our bilateral relationship with Mexico, one of our oldest and strongest trading partners, is rooted in trust and honesty, and there are many areas where we will continue to cooperate and work together."
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack similarly said that "Mexico's approach to biotechnology is not based on science" and "the United States is continuing to exercise its rights under the USMCA to ensure that U.S. producers and exporters have full and fair access to the Mexican market."
The Mexican Ministry of Economy responded in a statement that "Mexico does not agree with the position of the United States" and "is prepared to defend the Mexican position before this international panel and demonstrate: 1) that the national regulation is consistent with the commitments signed in the treaty; and 2) that the challenged measures do not have commercial effects."
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) has previously supported Mexico's efforts to phase out GM corn and glyphosate and on Thursday challenged claims by U.S. officials and agribusiness about Mexican obligations under the treaty and the potential economic impact of the policies.
"U.S. agribusiness exporters, the biotech industry, and their allies in Congress are pushing this case, intent on compelling Mexico to accept U.S. exports without debate. It is an assault on Mexico's food sovereignty," said Karen Hansen-Kuhn, IATP director of trade and international strategies. "Trade rules should provide a forum to protect and advance rights, rather than block them."
Hansen-Kuhn on Thursday authored an op-ed about Mexico's rights under the USMCA while ITAP senior adviser Timothy A. Wise wrote about "exaggerated claims of economic damage" that "sprang from a convenient set of assumptions, all of which are flawed and now outdated in light of the more recent presidential decree."
"As Mexican Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro stated in response to the USTR request for technical consultations, Mexico's decree is based on science, and she will challenge the U.S. government in the consultations to show 'quantitatively, with numbers, something that has not occurred: that the corn decree has commercially affected U.S. exporters,'" Wise also said.
"The Mexican government will show what has occurred: Its cherished tortillas are being contaminated with glyphosate and GM corn," he continued. "And they intend to put a stop to that."
As Reutersdetailed Thursday:
Under USMCA's dispute settlement rules, a five-person panel, chosen from a roster of pre-approved experts, must be convened within 30 days, with a chair jointly chosen and the U.S. side choosing two Mexican panelists and Mexico choosing two American panelists. The panel will review testimony and written submissions and its initial report is due 150 days after the panel is convened.
Previous USMCA dispute panels last year ruled in the U.S.'s favor in a dispute over Canadian dairy quotas, and against the U.S. on automotive rules of origin, siding with Mexico and Canada.
There have been other disagreements between the U.S. and Mexico, most notably over energy in which the U.S. has argued that Mexico's nationalist policy prejudices foreign companies.
Arturo Sarukhán, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States, said on social media Thursday that "of the two consultation processes—energy and yellow corn—this is the one that is politically most relevant for the White House in 2024," given the significance of agricultural states such as Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin to Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection, and the GOP nominee, which could be former President Donald Trump, who signed the USMCA.
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Alliance of 60+ Groups Demands Farm Bill That Rejects False Climate Solutions
"There's no way around it—we have to actually cut fossil fuel emissions," said Food & Water Watch.
Mar 16, 2023
Dozens of climate action, Indigenous rights, and public interest groups on Thursday announced an alliance that plans to engage with lawmakers ahead of this year's congressional debate on the Farm Bill, calling on them to pass legislation that rejects carbon offsets, carbon markets, and other policies that perpetuate a planet-heating agricultural system.
Food & Water Watchconvened more than 60 groups including the Farmworker Advocacy Network, the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), all of whom have been disturbed in recent months by the passage of "at least three pieces of legislation that promote carbon offsets and dirty energy, propping up corporate ag interests and factory farming."
As Congress prepares to debate the Farm Bill, which is passed every five years and includes a range of nutrition, agriculture, forestry, and conservation policies, lawmakers must "transition away from false solutions to the climate crisis," said the alliance. "Carbon trading and offsets are inherently flawed and allow fossil fuels to continue polluting. Therefore, related carbon trading corporate-backed schemes have no place in Farm Bill legislation."
The groups are calling for a Farm Bill that will "further biodiverse, regenerative, sustainable agriculture and food systems; reduce fossil fuels and pesticides in farming practices; and promote a community-based food system that is more resilient to climate change."
"Flawed policies promoted under the guise of 'climate smart agriculture' threaten to entrench the polluting status quo, and worsen the climate crisis."
In such legislation, they said, lawmakers must exclude carbon offsets—tradable "rights" that allow purchasers to claim credit for an activity that removes carbon from the atmosphere or prevents emissions. The groups said the Farm Bill should reject:
- Soil offsets, which store carbon in soil and remain "underdeveloped, inconsistent, and unable to accurately account for differences in carbon storage related to specific climates and geographies";
- Forest offsets, which include forest protections that proponents claim prevent future deforestation, but which critics say "mask true emissions reductions by claiming sequestration and biodiversity gains"; and
- Methane offsets, which proponents claim can "tackle the methane emissions from animal waste—typically cow or pig manure—using either separation equipment or anaerobic digestion."
Offset proposals are "incompatible with sustainable agriculture and may drive further consolidation of farms and agribusinesses," said the organizations, adding that the methane offset approach "wrongly supposes that significant methane emissions from farms are inevitable, as well as ignores the litany of co-pollutants from farms poisoning the air and water of nearby environmental justice communities."
As the Center for American Progress (CAP) said in a report about fraud in the market last October, there is mounting evidence that "many carbon offsets do not actually represent permanently removed carbon or avoided emissions."
In some cases, forests targeted by carbon offsets have been logged or burned or, "conversely, were never at risk of being deforested," reported CAP. Some businesses have also purchased 40-year contracts to protect forests, rendering the offset unvalid because carbon can remain in the atmosphere for a century.
"Carbon offset markets are fatally flawed," said Ben Lilliston, director of climate strategies at IATP, on Thursday. "The scientific consensus does not support them. They are riddled with fraud. The economics don't work for anyone, least of all farmers and landowners. The urgency of the climate crisis demands that we put this failed experiment aside, and focus on what we know can benefit farmers and the planet."
Jim Walsh, policy director for Food and Water Watch, said carbon markets and offsets are driven by "wishful thinking" that is "fanciful at best."
"Flawed policies promoted under the guise of 'climate smart agriculture' threaten to entrench the polluting status quo, and worsen the climate crisis," said Walsh. "Real climate action in the Farm Bill means breaking up factory farms, decoupling conservation programs from the private sector to directly serve the public good, and putting a stop to the Big Ag monopolies trampling our climate for private gain."
Food and Water Watch suggested carbon offsets and markets aim to help businesses and policymakers avoid making "real climate progress."
The alliance also said the Farm Bill must not include public funding for methane digester technology that "perpetuates pollution and contamination and continues abuses in dairy and meat farms," conservation programs that include carbon credits sales and trade, the overuse of pesticides, and policies that encourage farmers to produce as much as possible even as the practice depresses prices and allows "agribusiness companies to buy raw materials at far below cost, while farmers struggle to pay mounting bills."
The groups said they plan to attend congressional briefings and meet with lawmakers to urge them to pass a Farm Bill that:
- Respects and uplifts traditional Indigenous knowledge (TIK) in regard to farming and ranching practices;
- Broadens opportunities and support for BIPOC farmers and low-income communities to grow their own food;
- Invests in and improves existing conservation programs to help transition farmers to more ecologically based agricultural practices and systems;
- Broadens opportunities for small and medium-sized farms to access crop insurance and increases safety net funding;
- Emphasizes the importance of building biodiverse, healthy soil;
- Ensures fair competition and treatment in the agriculture sector to ensure better living wages for all farmers and farmworkers;
- Decouples conservation programs from the private sector to directly serve the public good; and
- Tightens and enforces antitrust laws to prevent further monopolization and consolidation of the food system.
"This Farm Bill represents the greatest opportunity in a generation to position American agriculture as a solution to the climate crisis," said Jason Davidson, senior food and agriculture campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "But we cannot do this through carbon markets and offsets underpinned by decades of failure, or through more handouts that further entrench Big Ag's stranglehold on our food system. We need Congress to pursue strategies that support farmers in building a truly regenerative, resilient and equitable food system."
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USDA Conservation Program Must Be Reformed to Stop Funding Pollution, Report Shows
"The more money that goes toward harmful, industrial practices, the less that goes toward good conservation," said a researcher from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
Apr 14, 2022
One of the U.S. government's key conservation programs has been subsidizing ecologically harmful agricultural operations to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year and must be reformed to ensure that only environmentally beneficial practices are supported.
"We need to reexamine what we are spending our money on and whether it deserves the label of 'environmental.'"
That's according to Payments for Pollution: How federal conservation programs can better benefit farmers and the environment, a new report out Thursday from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP).
Although a pair of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiatives--the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)--have helped some farmers adopt more sustainable methods, IATP showed last year that just 42% of CSP applicants and 31% of EQIP applicants were awarded contracts from 2010 to 2020.
IATP's new report scrutinizes the implementation of EQIP throughout 12 Midwestern states in 2020. Using state-level USDA data, IATP analyzed the number of contracts awarded, the amount of funding allocated, and the types of practices supported by EQIP in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.
It found that while thousands of farmers are being denied access to federal resources that could help them minimize their negative ecological impacts and improve their economic prospects, EQIP funneled more than $56 million toward industrial agricultural practices that worsened the quality of the land, air, and water in just a dozen states in 2020 alone.
"The more EQIP money that goes toward harmful, industrial practices, the less that goes toward good conservation," Micahel Happ, report author and program associate for climate and rural communities at IATP, said in a statement. "When fewer than one-third of EQIP applicants are awarded contracts nationwide, we need to reexamine what we are spending our money on and whether it deserves the label of 'environmental.'"
Citing the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Happ wrote that there is as "urgent need for more resilient systems for farmers and eaters to withstand the shocks of an increasingly unpredictable climate."
"Unfortunately, the current agricultural marketplace does not reward farmers for resilience," Happ continued. "Instead, it pressures farmers to buy into a system of high-cost, industrial farming methods that leave the water and air worse off while keeping many farmers strapped for cash year to year."
"This is where EQIP comes in," wrote Happ. "Since EQIP's inception in the 1996 Farm Bill, it has helped farmers pay for farming methods that can increase both economic and environmental resilience in the face of climate change--helping reimburse farmers for practices focused on increased soil health, cover crops, pasture management, buffers between waterways and tilled farmland, and many other tried-and-true methods of reducing risk in farming."
He added that "at the same time that EQIP pays farmers to improve their land and mitigate climate risks, it is also subsidizing many highly polluting farms that are actively making the climate crisis worse."
"At a large enough scale, any practice can help prop up big factory farms, but there are a handful of EQIP practices that we consider the worst offenders," states the report. After reviewing more than 300 practices supported by EQIP through cost-share payments in the Midwest in 2020, ITAP identified 10 particularly detrimental ones "that perpetuate unnatural systems."
IATP singled out "practices that disrupt the natural flow of water and many practices that incentivize farmers to keep livestock in CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations] and away from pastures."
For example, underground outlets, which transport surface water away from fields, make intensive crop production possible. But draining wetlands increases the volume of water in creeks, streams, and rivers, exacerbating erosion and carrying nitrates to the Gulf of Mexico.
Waste storage facilities used by large meat and dairy corporations that dominate the livestock supply chain might prevent seepage into soil and groundwater, but "they are cleaning up the messes created by industrial farming using federal money that would be better used on truly agroecological practices," stressed Happ. Moreover, the growing concentration of animal manure increases the emission of methane and nitrous oxide, two potent greenhouse gases.
According to IATP, the 10 worst EQIP-supported agricultural practices--labeled "industrial" or "factory-farm friendly"--are those that involve:
- Underground outlets;
- Subsurface drains;
- Waste storage facilities;
- Waste facility covers;
- Closure of waste impoundments;
- Manure transfers;
- Animal mortality facilities;
- Emergency animal mortality management;
- Roof runoff management; and
- Pumping plants for water control.
"Before the 2002 Farm Bill, CAFOs were specifically excluded from EQIP funding," IATP noted. "EQIP was started with the express intent of helping farmers put in place sound conservation on their land, but since the inclusion of CAFO funding in EQIP, more and more resources have gone toward industrial practices."
"As the costs of these industrial practices on the planet become clearer, it becomes less defensible to allow public funds to support them."
"By law, 50% of EQIP funds are earmarked for livestock-specific practices," says the report. "While some of that money does go toward practices like rotational grazing and water conservation-related practices, an inordinate amount goes toward industrial practices."
The amount of EQIP money that each Midwestern state allocates to "factory-farm friendly" practices varies significantly. For instance, Illinois and Minnesota spent 37.3% and 30.8% of their EQIP funds on industrial practices in 2020, respectively, while North Dakota spent just 2.1%."
Unlike other states in the region, North Dakota "continues to have strict protections for family farms and legal definitions of what is considered a farm," the report points out.
To prevent further misdirection of funds to large, polluting operations and to ensure federal conservation money reaches the low-capital farmers who need it most, "including those who integrate more climate-friendly, agroecological practices and systems," the report urges the USDA to:
- Pay farmers for practices ahead of time, at up to 100% of cost;
- Remove harmful industrial practices from EQIP funding eligibility and restore EQIP to its original intent;
- Improve outreach to farmers of color;
- Prioritize sustainable grazing systems in livestock set asides; and
- Ensure the responsible collection of data on who is being served by federal programs.
IATP argued that "while these policy solutions are by no means the only reforms needed for EQIP to betting align the program toward economic and environmental justice for farmers, they are good first steps."
The organization also encouraged farmers and other members of the public to get involved in their state technical advisory committees (STACs), which can help push the implementation various farm bill conservation programs in a more equitable direction.
"EQIP helps pay for crucial practices like erosion controls, better pasture management for livestock, and practices that keep runoff out of our waterways," said Happ. "We need to double down on these beneficial practices and target them toward farmers who need help the most. We can't waste precious resources on expensive structures that clean up messes that shouldn't have been made in the first place."
"As the costs of these industrial practices on the planet become clearer, it becomes less defensible to allow public funds to support them," the report concludes. "While the cost of climate inaction is high, the cost of climate antagonism is higher."
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