Oct. 1—Farm leaders from across Mexico traveled to Mexico City Sept. 25 for a forum, “Restoring National Agriculture.” The forum, held at the Economics Department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), was organized jointly by the leading insurgent national farm association in the country, the National Front to Save the Mexican Countryside (FNRCM), and the Economics Department, with the aim of pulling together the urgent national economic measures required to save Mexico’s independent family farms, which, like their American counterparts, are being ruined. FNRCM leaders came from nine top farm states.

Eighteen American farm leaders, informed by the Schiller Institute that Mexican farmers and economists were going to meet on this matter of common concern, sent a message of support, identifying how they faced the same problems as the Mexican farmers, and requested they be informed of the decisions taken at the forum. The full text of their statement is provided below.

At the conclusion of four hours of intense discussion of how decades of neoliberal free trade policies created today’s crisis, they issued a letter addressed to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, her Secretaries of Economics and of Agriculture and Rural Development, and the Agriculture Committees of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. (Full text below.) Their letter outlines the measures required to save both Mexican farmers and the national food supply, particularly when it comes to the basic staples: corn, wheat, sorghum, rice, and beans among them. The nation must restore those sovereign agricultural policies with a proven track record of fostering food self-sufficiency: protection from the monopoly cartels, parity prices to replace price-gouging by the speculators, state credit for agriculture, and the development of water resources.

The letter states bluntly that, to save its agriculture, Mexico must pull production of basic grains out of the grip of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade pact (USMCA) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Farm leaders are now out on the hustings nationwide, holding press conferences and organizing for the national strategy outlined in the letter to the President. The idea is to move hard now, during the just-opened period of “public consultations” on whether the USMCA should be revised, terminated, or extended to 2036, which questions are to be decided at joint negotiations of the three nations in July 2026. The current deadline for written submissions for Mexico’s public consultations is November 15. In the United States and Canada, the deadline is Nov. 3.

International Significance

The Mexican farmers’ initiative has critical international significance, even beyond North America. Their action is timed with moves by nations in the Global Majority to end the globalist corporate, financial domination of commodity production and trade by the many neo-colonialist practices associated with the City of London/Wall Street nexus. The Mexican mobilization rejects the axioms of what is likely the world’s worst free-trade pact, the infamous North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect January 1, 1994 (becoming USMCA in 2017). The Mexican initiative also implicitly challenges the World Trade Organization, established in January 1995. These pacts have enforced the private interests of the transnational corporations, not the interests of sovereign nations in beneficial trade.

The BRICS nations, for example, are now discussing alternatives. One is for a new grain trade platform, outside the control of Chicago, London, Paris and Amsterdam. Certain nations are also discussing national food self-sufficiency, where possible. President Prabowo Subianto of Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation in the world, has a goal of food self-sufficiency in his nation by early 2026. Other nations demand mutual-interest bi-national trade agreements.

The merits of the demands by Mexican farmers are indisputable for restoring a nation-serving agriculture policy. Mexico is now nearly 50% dependent on corn imports, mostly from the United States. The corn prices are set on the Chicago Board of Trade, through notorious speculation, and through the trade cartels. Moreover, Mexico is where corn originated, and where invaluable work was done to increase yields through the original Green Revolution at CYMMT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, starting in the 1940s). Mexico, with a population of 132 million, ranks first in the world for daily calories per capita coming from corn, thanks to its famous cuisine.

Over the decades, increasing imports of corn, beans, and other staples ruined family-scale producers of these commodities in Mexico, impoverishing the countryside. On top of this, transnationals over the past 30 years set up huge farm-for-export horticulture operations. Less known, is the degradation in the U.S. farmbelt in this process, where the transnationals enforced “getting big, or getting out” when it comes to corn, beans, wheat, and the commodities exported to Mexico and elsewhere. Once thriving U.S. rural communities have been depopulated.

Mexican and U.S. producers “have a common enemy,” the U.S. farm leaders’ support letter stressed. One signer, Dr. Taylor Haynes, a cattle rancher in Wyoming, and president of the Organization for Competitive Markets, wrote this month in his OCM newsletter, that “cropping” has been as hard-hit as the U.S. livestock sector, where the “Big Four” cartel firms have put thousands of ranchers and local stockyards out of business. Dr. Haynes wrote, “The total number of farms in the U.S. decreased from 2.04 million in 2017 to 1.88 million in 2024 [a loss of 160,000 farms—ed.]…. Small farms decreased as much as 9%.”

Farm, Faculty, Political Leaders

At the Sept. 25 university event, farm leaders on the podium were joined by the dean and professors from the UNAM Economics Department, professors from Mexico’s premiere agricultural college, Chapingo Autonomous University in the State of Mexico, and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, the 91-year-old former Mayor of Mexico City, a nationalist politician. He is the son of Mexico’s great President Gen. Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940), a national hero, famous for taking control over Mexico’s resources and its economic direction, away from the transnational commodity cartels.

The economic situation clearly interests Mexican youth, for many UNAM students filled out the auditorium, joining the dozens of farmers who came to listen to the presentations.

The Mexican farm leaders paid close attention when the message from their American peers (translated into Spanish) was read from the podium by a member of the “Save the Countryside” group. Some nodded at key points as it was read; due note was clearly taken of the farm institutions which the signers represent, and that they were from all over the United States.

The active support of the UNAM Economics Department adds important institutional weight to the farmers’ national policy initiative. UNAM’s weekly magazine, the Gaceta UNAM, headlined its Sept. 29 article on the forum, “Basic Grains Should Be Left Out of the USMCA,” with the kicker, “Also Out of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.” The call for the creation of “a sovereign credit policy for the agricultural sector” was also highlighted.

Agricultural Sovereignty

The dean of the Economics Department, Lorena Rodríguez León, opened the forum. She argued that it is important for the Economics Department “to listen to the voice of producers,” because their subject was national agriculture and the challenges faced by the sector, which is not only an academic matter, but affects the life, culture, and future of the country, the Gaceta reported.

“We face enormous challenges, not only for national agriculture, but also for agricultural sovereignty,” an issue, she added, which is being discussed around the world. She clarified that agricultural sovereignty should not be confused with absolute self-sufficiency, but “refers to a country’s capacity to decide how, what and for whom it produces its food, prioritizing local production. Of course, we must also talk about social justice, sustainability and respect for food culture, which, in Mexico’s case, is based on corn.” She urged that the conclusions we reach in the forum not remain solely within the academic world, but be spread more broadly, and, in particular, brought to the attention of government policymakers.

Arturo Huerta González, a professor for 50 years in the Economics Department and prominent critic of neoliberal economics, reported that the idea of holding such a forum came out of a meeting he had held with farmers in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, where the problems faced by basic grains producers were analyzed. He proposed that producers from different states of the country meet with the university team, because they equally suffer from the government policy, implemented for decades, of prioritizing the importation of cheap basic grains in the name of lowering inflation. He explained that this is done, “without considering the negative consequences that this has generated for producers, the income of these and their families and the generation of jobs that has led us to lose, to a large extent, food self-sufficiency in basic grains and that has resulted in a foreign trade deficit.”

Add to the academic backing for dialogue and policy change, that of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, who participated in the entire proceeding from the podium. At its conclusion, Cárdenas Solórzano said that, “a great mobilization is required in all the ways that can be promoted, to prevent our agriculture, especially basic grains, from being part of the USMCA that is about to be negotiated.”

Mobilization in Mexican Farm States

The farm leaders and activists who attended from the nine Mexican major food-producing states—Baja California, Chihuahua, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tamaulipas, and Zacatecas—are now holding press conferences back home. El Heraldo headlined its Sept. 29 report in the Chihuahua state edition, “Producers Ask Claudia Sheinbaum To Rethink Agri-Food Policy. They warn that austerity and budget cuts aggravate the rural crisis.” That article was then picked up by other media.

El Heraldo identified the key points outlined in the letter to the President, including “a universal policy of parity prices to cover national production costs, accompanied by credits with preferential rates, a system of collection, distribution of seeds and fertilizers, as well as the expansion of the agricultural frontier.”

Eraclio “Yako” Rodríguez Gómez from the FNRCM told reporters that they propose that a “National Agricultural Roundtable” be established, with the participation of producers, consumers, and the Mexican government, in order to “de-monopolize the market and reduce the control of large importers.” As the letter states, out of such a roundtable “a development strategy to strengthen the domestic market and promote the industrialization of the country” could be developed.

This strategy to restore food self-sufficiency by “restoring the concept of national agriculture in force between 1934 and 1982,” requires that basic grains be removed from the USMCA treaty, which has only “deepened food dependence and corporate control over basic grain prices, which exposes Mexico to possible ‘grain blackmail’, ” the letter argues. The prices for Mexico’s basic grains must no longer be set by the speculators of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

El Heraldo reported that the letter makes clear that no one is proposing that Mexico break commercial relations with the United States, but Mexico does need to diversify its markets, looking to new platforms such as the BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, “where there is greater understanding of the needs of the nations of the Global South.”

Expect More To Come

In the United States, there is turmoil in farming and ranching, as indicated in the growing agriculture trade deficit. No one believes this is a passing bad patch, or “cyclical.” The only solution is for a new economic and trade paradigm, in the mutual interest of all nations, on the principles as set forth in the Mexican farmers’ initiative.

This is ignored completely by the current Washington gunboat “market access” campaign, demanding that nations roll over, shut down their own farming, and import more U.S.-produced farm commodities. But the Washington policy—part of the tariff war—is doomed. Indian farmers burned U.S. Vice President JD Vance in effigy when he visited there last March with that imperial demand. Now, the U.S. Agriculture Department is planning a delegation to Indonesia in February 2026, to demand that that nation vastly increase its imports of U.S. farm goods, duty free. This is a direct counter to Indonesia’s “national agriculture” program, seeking self-sufficiency in rice and other staples.

Most dramatic is the demand by the U.S. soybean growers, for Washington to end its belligerence to China, and “secure a trade deal with China,” as called for Sept. 24 by the soybean farmers’ representative, Caleb Ragland, from Kentucky, president of the American Soybean Association. Last year, China bought $12 billion of U.S. soybeans. This current trade year, China has ordered none. Ragland noted, “The frustration is overwhelming.”

The dialogue in Mexico is the way for North America to join the Global Majority shift. Expect more from this initiative: It was proposed from the podium at the Sept. 25 conference that “an international forum be jointly convened by the UNAM, as one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America, and the FNRCM, with the participation of higher education institutions and farmers from Mexico and other parts of the world that have been affected by the large consortiums that impose the law of the market.”

Alberto Vizcarra Ozuna, Jesús María Martínez and Robert Baker contributed to this article.

Restoring National Agriculture

The following open letter to the President of Mexico and members of her Cabinet, issued at the conclusion of the Sept. 25, 2025 forum, “Restoring National Agriculture,” and signed by the farm producers and university economists who participated in the forum, summarizes the outcome of that event.

To: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, Constitutional President of the United Mexican States

Madam President,

In the context of the tariff war Mexico is experiencing as a result of the decisions made by the U.S. President [Donald Trump], it is clear that they intend to intensify the economic and trade policies stemming from the NAFTA-USMCA trade treaties. One of the main objectives is to complete the takeover of our national food market, which would result in the corporatization of our agricultural activities and in a greater displacement of national producers. Mexico should not continue on this path, especially in the context of the de facto trade war which we are experiencing, in which it is not unthinkable that “grain blackmail” could be used, to which we are vulnerable given our food dependency.

We must take advantage of the opportunity offered by the revision of the USMCA in order to prepare a national development strategy which starts with the decision to pull basic grains—such as corn, wheat, sorghum, beans and others—out of this trade agreement, since it is not viable to keep setting the prices of these products based on the speculative markets of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which are controlled by large agro-financial corporations which have appropriated for themselves the large U.S. government subsidies provided through export subsidies, distorting prices and manipulating markets.

The development strategy must be guided by the goal of food self-sufficiency, which requires returning to the concept of national agriculture, which we maintained from 1934 to 1982, which incorporated all the irrigated areas of the country which today are thrown into the uncertainty of speculative markets, which they call “commercial agriculture.” We are talking about five million hectares, which have the installed capacity and productive vocation to produce more than fifty percent of national grain production, including corn, wheat, sorghum, beans, soybeans and rice.

This asset must be restored for the national market, with a universal policy of parity prices, covering national production costs, reestablishing credit policies with preferential interest rates to once again build a national system of storage, seed production, fertilizer, and agricultural extension services and expansion of the agricultural frontier.

We call for a National Agrifood Pact, with the vigorous presence of the Mexican State, in which producers and consumers participate, in order to reorder the market and dismantle the monopoly control exercised by the big importers.

The worst budget approach in a crisis situation is to admit austerity and cuts. To constrain spending feeds the crisis cycle. We need to strengthen public spending and reestablish a national credit policy that makes the Bank of Mexico responsible for the country’s growth and economic development. The emergency which the Mexican countryside is experiencing is a good opportunity to do this.

Mexico does not need to break off trade relations with the United States in order to defend its sovereignty, nor to be able to seek international alliances to diversify its markets, joining the new investment and trade platforms that are emerging with a greater understanding of the needs of the nations of the Global South, such as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Madam President, in these great tasks, we national producers, citizens, businessmen and academics are your allies. Let us set up a National Roundtable for dialogue and together design a development strategy aimed at strengthening the domestic market and the industrialization of the country.

Economists and the National Front for Restoring the Mexican Countryside.
Mexico City, September 25, 2025

CC: Julio Berdegué Sacristán, Secretary of Agriculture and Rural Development

CC: Marcelo Ebrard Casaubón, Secretary of Economics

CC: Agriculture Committee, Senate of the Republic

U.S. and Mexican Farm Leaders Agree, Wall Street Cartels Are Our Common Enemy

Eighteen American farm leaders, from 13 U.S. states, sent an important message of support to Mexican farm leaders on the occasion of the forum on “Restoring National Agriculture,” held at the School of Economics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City on Sept. 25, 2025. The Mexican farm leaders present, in particular, paid close attention when the message from their American peers (translated into Spanish) was read to the forum from the podium by a member of the Save the Countryside group. Some nodded at key points as it was read; due note was clearly taken of the names of those who signed and the institutions they represent. The following is the text in full. —Gretchen Small

GREETINGS to the Discussion for “Restoring National Agriculture”

Sept. 25, 2025, in Mexico City, with the National Front to Save the Countryside, and members of the Economics Faculty of the National University of Mexico (UNAM).

FROM: Farm and Ranch Leaders in the United States to Friends in Mexico

MESSAGE to be conveyed Sept. 25, 2025

WE RECEIVE THE NEWS with very serious interest, and appreciation, of your dialogue set for Sept. 25, 2025 in Mexico City, between farmers and ranchers from several states of Mexico, and members of the Economics Faculty of the National University of Mexico (UNAM), under the theme, “Restoring National Agriculture,” focused on how to turn back the policies and practices harmful to the nation.

WE SEND YOU OUR SUPPORT, out of a common interest in mobilizing to overcome the transnational enemy dominating farm production, trade and the food supply in both our nations, and restoring nation-serving, family farming at home and everywhere. We have a common enemy, operating through monopoly cartels, and centered in Wall Street, City of London, Chicago and Amsterdam.

WE ARE EXPERIENCING TERRIBLE CONDITIONS in the United States that make family farming and ranching impossible to continue. We have been fighting the situation in many different ways through our organizational and other joint efforts: in Washington, in state legislatures, and in the courts. Just a few points: Input costs exceed revenue for farmers producing corn, soybeans and other crops. Dairy has been slammed. The U.S. imports beef from more than 20 countries. The U.S. is 75% import-dependent for lamb. The monopoly cartels over the past 25 years set up patterns of horticulture production and rigged trade, undercutting farming communities in both our nations, and throughout our Hemisphere. There is no credit policy for new farmers; the average age of farmers is climbing. The list goes on.

YOUR AGENDA FOR DISCUSSION, as we see from your invitation, is a good start: “1) Let us protect the national food market; 2) pull basic grains off the Chicago Exchange and out of the NAFTA/USMCA free trade agreements; and 3) establish a sovereign credit policy.”

WE RESPECTFULLY ASK you to provide us with a summary of your discussion in terms of points of principle, and of concrete action. We look forward to sharing ideas that will benefit family farms and ranches in each of our respective countries and benefit international relations among sovereign nations everywhere.

The discussion about “basic grains” is fundamental, and the approach can carry over into all other sectors of agriculture and the food supply. The historical capacity in the United States for volume of output and productivity has been warped by the monopoly cartels into an “export source” for ruining other nations’ farm-food systems. But there are vast shifts underway in the world. There are big plans for agriculture in what’s called the “Global Majority” nations.

WE SALUTE YOUR COURAGE AND RESPECT YOUR EFFORTS!

Fraternal best wishes.

SIGNERS (Affiliations are for personal identification only).

Robert “Bob” Baker, Leesburg, Virginia; Former Grain and Livestock Producer; Director of Schiller Institute Agricultural Commission

Jon Baker, Harper, Iowa; Cattle and Grain Farmer; Former Agricultural Bank Vice President and Loan Officer; Vice President of the Iowa Stockgrowers Association

James Benham, Versailles, Indiana; Former State President of the Indiana Farmers Union; National Board Member of the National Farmers Union

Mike Callicrate, Colorado Springs, Colorado; Cattleman; President and Founder, Ranch Foods Direct

Angel Cushing, Allen, Kansas; Goat Farmer; Independent Farm Activist against the Green New Deal / 30×30 land grab

Jesus Holguin Cazares, Dodge City, Kansas; Cattle Rancher, President of the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association

Frank Endres, Corning, California; Wheat and Cattle Rancher; National Board Member of National Farmers Organization (NFO) and member of R-CALF USA

Dr. Taylor Haynes, Laramie, Wyoming; Rancher; President, and on Board of Directors, Organization for Competitive Markets

Angela Huffman, Wharton, Ohio; Sheep Farmer; President of Farm Action

Joe Maxwell, Mexico, Missouri; farmer, former Lt. Gov of Missouri, Lawyer; Retired First Sargent and 20-year veteran in the Missouri National Guard; Currently President of the Farm Action Fund.

Vaughn Meyer, Reva, South Dakota; Cattle Rancher; Former President of the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association; Former President of the Organization for Competitive Markets

Eric Nelson, Moville, Iowa; Farm/Feeder and Rancher; President of the Iowa Stockgrowers Association

Andrew Olson, Windom, Minnesota; Grain Producer; Farm Leader and Chairman of the Minnesota Schiller Institute Agricultural Commission

Mike Schultz, Brewster, Kansas; Rancher and Farmer; Vice-President of Organization for Competitive Markets

Matthew Steele, Manhattan, Kansas; Executive Director of the Kansas Cattlemen’s Association

Mike Weaver, Franklin, West Virginia; Board of Directors, and former President of Contract Poultry Growers Association of the Virginias; former President of the Organization for Competitive Markets.

Charles White, Fowlerville, Michigan; Dairy and Grain Farmer, Farm Leader

Ron Wieczorek, Mitchell, South Dakota; Rancher and Farm Leader; Former Candidate for U.S. Congress; Chairman of the South Dakota Schiller Institute Agricultural Commission