Mexico, considered by many to be the cradle of corn, issued permits on Thursday to grow genetically modified corn for the first time in a bid to eventually boost production of the grain. Mexico’s agriculture ministry said the two permits will allow only experimental genetically modified (GM) corn crops, which will be restricted to states where no native varieties of corn are grown.

Today, International World Food Day, as declared by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, La Via Campesina is mobilizing globally along with allies in an overwhelming expression of outright rejection of Monsanto and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), in the name of food sovereignty.

Mexico will decide in October whether it will allow experimental plantings of genetically modified corn, an agriculture ministry official said on Monday. DuPont Co, Dow Chemical and Monsanto have filed applications with the Mexican government for permission to begin testing their genetically modified corn strains. ”At this point we are working to draw up the permit necessary to authorize an experimental planting in the (winter) season,” said Enrique Sanchez, the agriculture ministry’s director of plant and animal health, in an interview.

Even if crop yields won’t dramatically improve after the introduction of GM corn, stabilization of farm incomes will help spur producers to invest in technology and mechanization. However, in order for GM corn to have a significant impact on production, efficiency and competitiveness, the government as well as private companies promoting this new technology will have to tackle the realities of Mexican farming: low technology levels, lack of investment and widespread resistance to change.

Since publishing regulations in March last year to allow select plantings, the government has received 25 requests from farmers and companies interested in the GMO seeds. ”The permits are in the process of being reviewed,” agriculture ministry official Enrique Sanchez told reporters. Sanchez said that four of the requests are near the final stages and once they are approved by the environment ministry planting could start at the beginning of the fall harvest season in September.

The appearance of genetically modified proteins in maize seed stocks throughout Mexico paints a curious pattern that suggests why efforts to prevent the flow of transgenic plant material into that country could fail, reports a team of researchers in Mexico and at the University of California, Davis. The researchers hope that their findings, published May 29 online in the journal Public Library of Science, will help guide development of methods and public policies for regulating the movement of genetically modified plant material into local seed stocks in centers of crop origin and diversity.

Several interviews were broadcast on U.S. television news services that highlighted the fact that Mexican farmers cannot compete with subsidized corn imported from the U.S. These farmers were forced to move into makeshift dwellings in the shadows of Mexico City. As advocates for family farmers, in the U.S. and abroad, the American Agriculture Movement has worked to make this catastrophe known and has worked with Congress in an attempt to correct the injustice for many years.

Greenpeace says it has filed a criminal complaint against the Mexican president and other Cabinet members for allowing genetically modified corn to be planted for experimental purposes. The organization says it filed the complaint with Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s office, alleging the government has not set up safeguards to protect the crop’s genetic diversity, as Mexican law requires.

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 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.

The world’s leading wheat experts from Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas—invited to Mexico by Nobel Prize Winner Norman Borlaug—today reported significant progress in developing new varieties of wheat capable of resisting a virulent form of an old plant disease that threatens wheat production worldwide. [...] Ravi Singh, a CIMMYT wheat geneticist and pathologist and lead author of the study, said highyielding, Ug99-resistant spring wheat varieties are rapidly emerging through an intensive international ”shuttle breeding program.”