Eggs up, chicken up, beans up: trouble looms for food politics in Mexico
I was surprised several years ago in Mexico to discover that a kilo of eggs cost about the same as a kilo of tortillas, somewhere around a dollar for either. And chicken was beginning to rival beans. Not surprisingly people shifted to eating lots of eggs, more chicken and fewer tortillas and beans. It seemed like a big step forward to many poor people and to the huge growing middle class.
Now there’s trouble. First there was a drought that decimated last year’s bean crop. Imports from the US are held up because the Mexican government insists that the beans that enter are cleaned of soil.
Keller estimates that Mexican consumers, some of whom are poor, are paying roughly 50 percent more for dry beans than they were a year ago. Given that, and based on some of his company’s internal figures, it appears that Mexican consumption of dry beans is declining, he says.
In the past, Mexico accounted for about one-third of U.S. dry bean exports, with the U.S. supplying about 10 percent of all dry beans consumed annually in Mexico, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. Both North Dakota and Minnesota are major producers of pinto and black beans, which are a staple in the diets of many Mexicans. Dry beans still snagged at border. Agweek August 5 2012.
Then came avaian flu driving up the price of eggs and chicken.
A summer epidemic of bird flu in the heart of Mexico’s egg industry has doubled the cost of a kilo (2.2 pounds), or about 13 eggs, to more than 40 pesos ($3), a major blow to working- and middle-class consumers in a country that consumes more than 350 eggs per person each year. That’s 100 more eggs per person than in the United States. Mexico scrambles to cope with egg shortage – Yahoo! Finance. August 25 2012.
Price has also been a factor in bean consumption. The price of beans versus the cost of chicken leg quarters favors chicken. “Beans are more expensive.”That could change, however. “Avian influenza outbreaks are pushing up poultry prices.” Southwest Farm Press, August 20th 2012.
Nothing to do with the current drought in the US. Everything to do with likely unrest in a population already fed up with the state of security in Mexico.
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