Mexico produces the vast majority of white corn, but in recent years it has intensified a campaign to increase the cultivation of yellow corn, used mainly for livestock feed, in an effort to reduce the bulky imports of this type of grain from the United States.
The country imports about 17 million tons of yellow corn a year from the United States. The Ministry of Agriculture did not break down the expected production for this year by type of corn.
On June 19, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that he is about to sign an agreement so that the country’s tortilla shops can only use white corn in their production and that he will impose import tariffs on transgenic white corn.
“We are establishing order and there is no need to be afraid of controversies,” he said.
Five days later, the federal government issued a decree to modify the temporary tariffs applicable to white corn in Mexico, with the aim of guaranteeing the stability of grain prices and promoting its production and internal marketing.
