American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall met with a couple of the top officials in Mexico, Secretary of the Economy Tatiana Clouthier and Mexican Ambassador to the U.S. Esteban Moctezuma Barragon to talk about ag trade.
“Annually, we’re over 40 billion dollars of two-way trade. Mexico is the third-largest export market for U.S. farmers and ranchers, a large import market, of course,” Senior Director of Congressional Relations for AFBF Dave Salmonsen said. “And, of course, this is the first anniversary, just a few weeks ago, of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement—Tariff-free trade and agriculture between the U.S. and Mexico—we reviewed that and how important USMCA will be to the future of our trade relationship.”
He explained that one of the biggest reasons the department wanted to meet with officials was to talk about the issues the United States and Mexico have when it comes to trade. “One of which is a decree that was put out by them last December on glyphosate. They want to phase out the use of that, restrict it in Mexico, and we’re very concerned about that, given what a large market for U.S. corn Mexico is,” Salmonsen said. “We also got to the issue of biotechnology product approvals. Mexico has been very slow, nonexistent really lately, and we certainly made the point that we need to continue with a science-based approach when we’re dealing with technology.”
One of the other topics brought up during the meeting was challenges with seasonal produce farmers. “Well, it’s an issue on both sides of the border. We have many of our growers in different parts of the country that have a real concern that product comes in overwhelming amounts and really hurts prices, hurts their domestic marketing, with the short marketing window they have for various products. We’re talking about blueberries and strawberries and squash and cucumbers and peppers and other products. Mexican side also has issues, of course, they want to see marketing opportunities here in the U.S.,” Salmonsen explained.
The two sides also discussed safety issues when it comes to farmers at the Southern U.S. border due to the number of migrants coming into the United States.
