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Comment by b112

4 hours ago

My understanding is that it caused the price of corn to go way up, meaning the poor in Mexico found food far more expensive.

International markets and all that...

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b112

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stevenwoo  4 hours ago

NAFTA and successive treaties forced Mexico to allow much cheaper corn from the USA to displace many smaller corn farms in Mexico, only larger farms could survive that and farming of corn is declining in Mexico. Also inexpensive processed food displaced traditional diet goods at the same time for the same reasons, probably contributing to obesity epidemic that only started in Mexico after those treaties.

  • b112  3 hours ago

    Likely, and then... after Mexican farms went out of business, they added biofuels, the price spiked, and Mexico had no domestic corn people could buy.

    It's sort of what they want for Canada. They keep trying to attack our protected agricultural sectors, and no sane country doesn't protect their food supply. Amusingly, they want 10% of our dairy market (as a start), and they already have a few percent.

    Yet we're 1/10th the size of them. So they make a massive fuss, over 5 additional percent of our market or so, which for their market size is 0.5% of its overall size. The US economy won't even notice, but the Canadian market will 10x as much. It's just petty.

  • WarmWash  3 hours ago

    Processed foods are not cheaper than healthier options. People constantly repeat this, but it's flat out wrong.

    The best way to apologize for people who, is to say that they don't have enough time to cook between all the jobs they have.

    • Retric  2 hours ago

      > cheaper than heather options

      Due to spoilage concerns grocery stores price food based on shelf stability not just production costs. Processed foods are generally shelf stable enough for this not to be a major concern.

      Similarly economies of scale apply in many situations. Slow cooking beans takes more energy the smaller the batch size due to surface area to volume ratios etc.

      Combined with the opportunity costs associated with cooking + cleanup means there’s very few healthy options that can compete with highly processed foods.

      7 replies →

    • jrflowers  1 hour ago

      > Processed foods are not cheaper than healthier options.

      I have bad news for you about flour