In Mexico, old corn is new again, and it's helping preserve jobs and biodiversity.

The Spanish word for delicious - rico - can also mean rich in the material sense. I contemplated this etymological irony as I ate the most delicious tortillas in my experience in Xicotlán, a small indigenous village in Guerrero, Mexico. About 200 km and a world away from Acapulco, the women here shape impossibly large, blue-tinged tortillas by first patting them out between their hands and then spinning and stretching them on a board. The size of dinner plates, tortillas are the main course, garnished with just salt and a small handful of cooked black beans.

The global trading game also contains some irony in the case of Mexican corn. Though corn originated here, domesticated by peasants from the wild teosinte some 5,000 years ago, it makes little sense - according to world market wisdom - for Mexicans to continue growing corn at all. While Mexico has a wealth of corn biodiversity (two or three varieties, out of over more than 2,800 being cultivated, were the main ingredients of those particular Xicotlán tortillas) Mexican farmers who maintain and develop that biodiversity are not getting wealthy growing the staple food crop. Across the border in the United States, in contrast, fewer than a dozen varieties are planted commercially on the vast mid-West plains where industrial agriculture enjoys large subsidies, lower costs and higher productivity.

The plight of Mexican corn farmers has a long history, tied closely to the state's view of rural farmers and peasants; many feel that the government sees them only as a burden. One rallying cry at protests marking the tenth anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was "para un campo con campesinos." Roughly translated, it means "We want a countryside with people in it."

Farmers and peasants were once seen as key to food security, when it was still defined as self-sufficiency in food. In the 1960s, Mexico actually produced enough corn to meet its own demand. But over time, striving for food self-sufficiency became a costly pursuit for the state, as the government subsidized tortillas for urban dwellers - thereby indirectly subsidizing businesses that paid less than a livable wage to workers - and occasionally propped up the price paid to producers. Following the debt crisis of the early 1980s, the Mexican government withdrew from many of its roles in the economy, and became more laissez-faire in terms of agriculture.

Despite much protest, corn and beans were included in negotiations for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). According to the agreement, the Mexican corn market was supposed to be opened incrementally, with an annual increase to the amount of U.S. corn that could be imported tariff-free. Instead, Mexico opened the floodgates, drowning its own farmers in imported corn: the price dropped, hurting Mexican producers. Those imports include genetically modified corn, which has contaminated some Mexican varieties through cross-pollination.

Mexican farmers and environmental groups have fought for renegotiation of the agricultural chapter of NAFTA and for more promotion of Mexican corn for national consumption, but with only limited success. Now, rather than accept their demise - not to mention a future of bland, yellow tortillas - one group of Mexican farmers has banded together to convince Mexican consumers to put out their money where their mouths are.

"We're the vanguard of the tortilla industry," says Sergio Armando Castro. He works as an advisor with the Industrializer of Mexican Corn (IMMEX), a project of one farmers' organization that has vigorously protested NAFTA. IMMEX operates under the brand name Nuestro Maíz - Our Corn - and has organized thousands of corn producers to open 17 community businesses that produce tortilla dough from high-quality local varieties. Each plant supplies nearby outlets of a chain of over 200 tortillerías - the ubiquitous tortilla shops which women visit daily, clean tea towel in hand, to pick up a pound or more of pre-made tortillas.

"We were at the point of abandoning the countryside altogether," says Castro of the period after NAFTA, explaining that a tonne of U.S. corn sells for 800 pesos while it costs Mexican producers 2,500 pesos to produce the same tonne. Numbering just over 2,000 farmers in 17 different Mexican states, IMMEX member cannot influence the world price for corn. But by eliminating the middlemen, IMMEX may make corn production into a viable economic activity as well save biodiversity. The key to the financial success of the project is turning local varieties of corn into tasty tortillas that rival those in Xicotlán. The reason is that while a kilogram of corn sells for below the cost of production, the same amount processed into tortillas is worth almost five times as much.

IMMEX aims to create a viable future for corn and the families who grow it. "They're earning a better price for their corn," says Jorge Aguirre Alonso, Castro's colleague. He's quick to add that IMMEX is also good for consumers. "These are tortillas without additives, without filler, made in the traditional way that people used to make at home. So they have the same flavour, the same texture, as the tortillas that people loved growing up. They're made according to local tastes."

At the same time as it creates economic alternatives for corn growers, IMMEX is defending the biodiversity of Mexican corn. A giant seed bank in Mexico City holds some 20,000 samples of distinct corn varieties, but it's uncertain if these kernels would actually grow if planted. True biodiversity - and food security - comes from having thousands of farmers planting and selecting seeds each year, argues Mexico City-based Greenpeace campaigner Areli Carreon.

"The more people planting corn, saving seed, producing corn for a variety of uses, the stronger our food sovereignty is," says Carreon. The thousands of varieties grown in Mexico have developed through seed selection by farmers who want corn with different characteristics - for use in soups, for tamales, for tortillas. Seeds are also selected to produce plants suitable for distinct, and sometimes harsh, growing conditions; for example, on steep hillsides where long roots are needed, and in windy valleys where short plants are more likely to survive.

"Gene banks are not the way to preserve the biodiversity of corn," argues Carreon. "We need to promote the cultural diversity that has resulted in that biodiversity."

Carreon spends much of her time educating people about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and trying to convince consumers to buy local corn. Locations of Nuestro Maíz tortilla shops are listed on Greenpeace-Mexico's website. Carreon believes there is unmet consumer demand for good tortillas produced with local corn varieties.

"There's a region...between Mexico City and Cuernavaca [an hour-and-a-half from the capital city] where the towns are very close together and where we see the importance of tortilla sales direct to the consumer. People come from Mexico City and Cuernavaca to buy tortillas from women who stay up all night making them."

And no doubt the tortillas they make are quite rico indeed.

Written September 2005.