April 3, 2009
by Arturo Barba, SciDev.Net
Mexico City has announced that it will take steps to protect
more than 60 maize breeds known to grow in its territory, also
known as the Mexican Altiplano.
The announcement came just days before the Mexican Government
said that it would allow the experimental cultivation of
genetically modified (GM) maize in other parts of the country.
The first announcement was made by Marcelo Ebrard, mayor of
Mexico City, in regulations known as the 'Declaration of
Protection of the Maize Breeds of the Mexico Altiplano'.
"The Altiplano is one of the centres of maize domestication,"
says the decree. "There the Teotihuacan, Tolteca and Mexica
cultures have their splendor and contributed to the integration
of Mesoamerican agriculture."
Maize is Mexico's staple food. Half of Mexico City territory is
agricultural and around 3,000 hectares are cultivated with maize
every year.
The declaration says that a research programme will be
established with the aim of improving local maize breeds. There
will also be funds to support farmers who sow only native seeds
and to promote the use of organic fertiliser and pesticides. The
purchase and distribution of transgenic maize in Mexico City is
now banned.
Esther Orozco, director-general of the Institute of Science and
Technology of Mexico City, says that genetic modification is
controversial and generates opposing opinions, but Mexico City
is the world's "maize capital" and it is important to take care
of native species: "It is necessary to increase the research to
know the real effects of the transgenic maize in crop
biodiversity."
There are also plans for a germplasm bank storing samples of the
Altiplano's maize seeds, she says.
"There is no way to control the arrival of transgenic maize
because transnational companies are against the labelling of GM
food, although in Mexico City the presence of transgenic
material has not been detected yet," says Joaquin Ortiz, an
agricultural researcher at the Postgraduate School in Texcoco,
near Mexico City.
The declaration came just a few days before an executive decree
by the president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, that effectively
lifts the country's ban on experimental cultivation of
transgenic maize (March 6). Commercial planting remains banned.
"Experimental sowing with GM maize will be authorised, case by
case, by SAGARPA [the Ministry of Agriculture] to those
companies and research centres which ask for that, submit very
detailed technical information and guarantee the binding on
strict biosafety measures. The crops resulting will not be
commercialised," says the decree.
Experimental sowing will be performed exclusively in authorised
places, outside the origin and diversity zones of traditional
maize, it can be done only in some regions in the north of the
country, where hybrid maize varieties are cultivated in
commercial form.
Ariel Alvarez, director of the Intersecretarial Commission of
Biosafety and Genetically Modified Organisms (Cibiogem), told
SciDev.Net that 25 requests for experimental GM maize have been
received.
"The first permission will be authorised by the end of 2009 in
Sonora, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Chihuahua and Baja California,
states of the north where there aren't native corns," Fabrice
Salamanca, director of AgroBIO, which represents biotechnology
companies, told SciDev.Net. |
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