Mexican Farmers See Opportunity to Renegotiate NAFTA after Trump

Mexican Farmers See Opportunity to Renegotiate NAFTA after Trump

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A group of Mexican farmer leaders and academics believe that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's pledge to renegotiate NAFTA, will be a good opportunity to review areas of the treaty that are not favorable to the sector in Mexico. Experts say that after 23 years of its implementation, NAFTA has helped dismantle Mexico's agricultural production system through neoliberal policies that have left millions of poor farmers without state support and have increased the country’s food dependency on aboard. “Before the neoliberal economic model, there were public institutions in charge of productive processes, such as planting and the granting of machinery and equipment to farmers, but with NAFTA the Mexican state reduced its role in the agriculture industry and transferred the control to transnational companies and the private sector,” analyst Carlos Ricardo Menendez told La Jornada. According to Menendez, by renegotiating NAFTA the Mexican government has the opportunity to rebuild its commodity storage and marketing system; guarantee a fair price for farmers and increase the use of irrigation water and revitalize the development bank that granted credits to small and medium farmers. 

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