Mexico
Revise GMO corn decree or face U.S. challenge, Vilsack warns Mexico
Ahead of a visit by Mexican government leaders, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Thursday that the Biden administration was ready to challenge Mexico under North American trade rules unless it “rectifies” a presidential decree that would ban imports of genetically modified corn at the start of 2024.
U.S. will ‘stem the onslaught’ of unfair Mexican vegetable imports, say Florida growers
The Biden administration will address Mexico's trade practices although it will not open a formal investigation into unfair government support of the produce industry, said the Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association on Sunday.
A huge bed of pricey scallops couldn’t save a Mexican fishing village
“In Teacapán, a small fishing village on the coast of Sinaloa, Mexico, Belen Delgado made a discovery that would change his life and the lives of everyone he knew,” reports Esther Honig in FERN’s latest story, in partnership with the podcast Snap Judgment.
U.S. food prices insulated from warfare in Ukraine, says Vilsack
The Russian invasion of Ukraine will have, at most, a muted effect on U.S. food prices, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Thursday. “We have tremendous (domestic) production capacity,” he told reporters attending the USDA’s annual Agricultural Outlook Forum.
North America can lead the world on climate mitigation, says Vilsack
The agriculture ministers of Canada, Mexico, and the United States described national initiatives to boost productivity and slow global warming at the World Food Prize symposium on Thursday, with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack saying, "There's a tremendous opportunity for North America to lead the world." While he called for being tolerant of different approaches to climate mitigation, Vilsack was clear that in his view, the U.S. high-technology approach is the best.
It’s early, but China is No. 1 buyer of U.S. corn
Thanks to a buying spree, China is far and away the top customer for U.S. corn six weeks into the marketing year, said chief executive Ryan LeGrand of the U.S. Grains Council on Thursday. Its purchases of 10.4 million tonnes for delivery during 2020/21 are twice as large as sales to date to Mexico, usually the No. 1 importer.
U.S. and Mexico broaden food safety partnership
Feds investigating after H-2A worker died of Covid-19 complications at a Texas potato plant
Marco Antonio Galvan Gomez, a 48-year-old husband and father from Guanajuato, Mexico, had worked eight years on a seasonal visa at Larsen Farms, one of the biggest potato producers in the nation, when he died of complications related to Covid-19 on July 20. He had spent the previous 12 days struggling to keep working despite suffering from fever, aches and shortness of breath; Larsen officials denied his request to return home to Mexico, and Galvan got no medical treatment from local health officials, according to FERN's latest story, published with Texas Observer. <strong>(No paywall)</strong>
U.S. ag exports to China on the rise, but not at ‘phase one’ pace
China is stepping up its purchases of U.S. farm exports, but it will not meet the ambitious sales goals of the "phase one" agreement that de-escalated the Sino-U.S. trade war, said USDA data on Wednesday. In a quarterly forecast, USDA analysts said China, the farm sector's No. 1 customer before the trade war, will remain locked in third place as an export destination in 2021, behind Canada and Mexico.
Maybe we should cut off cattle imports, says Trump
U.S. embassy and consulates in Mexico to shut down, threatening labor supply for American farms
American farmers are bracing for major delays in the arrival of workers through the H-2A visa program after U.S. officials announced late Monday that the embassy in Mexico City and all U.S. consulates in Mexico will close, effective March 18, due to health and safety concerns caused by the Covid-19 global pandemic. Officials at the embassy did not say when the facilities might reopen. The H-2A program brings some 200,000 foreign workers to U.S. farms each year.<strong>(No paywall)</strong>
Voluntary, not mandatory, meat-origin labels, says Perdue
Despite interest among cattle activists, a return to mandatory country-of-origin labels on beef "is not going to happen unless we want to do a billion-dollar litigation damage with Mexico and Canada," said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Wednesday.
Senate to give Trump a trade victory days before impeachment trial
Near-unanimous Senate approval, ‘hopefully soon,’ predicted for USMCA
House to start ‘new NAFTA’ on its way to reality
The Democratic-controlled House is set to approve one of President Trump’s top priorities today — an updated North American trade pact — a day after impeaching him. The Senate is not expected to give final congressional approval to the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement until early next year.
Lighthizer seeks to reassure Mexico on USMCA deal
With the "new NAFTA" nearing a House vote, U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer assured Mexico that disputes over labor provisions of the trade agreement will be resolved by independent panels. Mexico was suspicious that a U.S. proposal to post five Labor Department attaches in Mexico City was an underhanded way of bringing foreign labor inspectors into the country.
A deal on USMCA, but final approval will wait until 2020
Kudlow says ‘no arbitrary deadlines,’ but a Sino-U.S. trigger date is near
China said it would waive import tariffs on some shipments of U.S. soybeans and pork in a goodwill gesture hours before White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the two nations were close to an interim agreement on the trade war. "No arbitrary deadlines," said Kudlow, but the Trump administration has set Dec. 15 as the date for higher duties on $160 billion of consumer goods made in China.
Mexico to displace China as top corn importer
China will remain the leading importer of soybeans and cotton, but Mexico will be the world's largest corn importer for the rest of this decade, said the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. The United States would be the top corn exporter despite increased competition from Brazil, said the University of Missouri think tank in updating its international marketing baseline.