ABSTRACT
The Mexican delegation at the biosafety negotiations represented a country of contrasts – of the land itself and of economic circumstances. The larger part of Mexico’s biodiversity is found, and it exists in a very close relationship with the region’s ‘subsistence agriculture’, which is very different from the extensive agriculture of the north. Mexico is the origin of commercially important crops such as tomatoes, beans, potatoes, chillies and also maize. Mexico had to determine, from a technical and scientific point of view, the importance of gene flux in its areas with high biodiversity in maize landraces and what would be the potential consequences. The Mexican government’s approach of having a de facto moratorium on the sowing of transgenic maize is an example of the application of the precautionary principle, renamed the ‘precautionary approach’ in the biosafety negotiations. Several elements must be strengthened so that there can be a complete integration of agriculture in Mexico’s economic development.
