Mexican Farmer Protests are Getting Results – Could their American Counterparts Follow?

If there ever was a time for American farmers to protest, then that time is now.

Contract cancellations and frozen grant payments early in Trump’s term paralyzed a series of projects for American producers, from financing new irrigation systems to strengthening local markets.  Adding insult to injury, soy farmers nearly became a causality in our administration’s trade war with China.  But details of the current deal, while a much-needed reprieve, show that the negotiated soy purchases from China do nothing more than return farmers to Biden-level acquisitions.  This, as US cattle ranchers have been left stretching their heads when a deal was brokered to purchase beef from Argentine ranchers, and American farmer calls for country of origin labelling and to challenge meat industry corporations are ignored.

Perhaps farmers in the United States should look south, to Mexico specifically, for guidance on what they should do to improve their economic situation.  There, since mid-October, over 100,000 farmers from all over the country have participated in protests – roadblocks, to be precise – to demand that the Steinbaum government pass policies to address their economic problems.  More than symbolic, the Mexican farmer protests have got results, spurring the government to make concessions and engage in dialogue.

Mexican farmers, even though they are on average smaller than their counterparts in the US, face the same general problem of dealing with low commodity prices, and high fertilizer and pesticide costs.  What has triggered the Mexican protests of late is how corn farmers are enduring the lowest prices since 2017, as over the course of 2025 they have seen the price for their product drop 21%.

To face this situation, the farmers took matters into their own hands and went to the streets.

Coordinated by el Frente Nacional para el Rescate del Campo Mexicano (the National Front to Rescue the Mexican Countryside), which emerged in 2023 and includes groups from around the country, farmers launched a national strikeon October 14th.  Their strike doesn’t stop production, but the circulation of goods, blocking roads around the country including at tollways.  They demand a floor price, and that their government renegotiate the USMCA to stop the flow of cheap corn and other products from the United States.  Joining corn farmers have been avocado and lemon producers also demanding stable prices.  In addition to their economic demands, the farmers have also denounced the lack of law and order in the countryside, with some having to pay cartels so that they can market their crops.  Such demands have been met with violence, with the farmer, Bernardo Bravo Manríquez, killed on October 20th for speaking out when seeking economic justice.

President Steinbaum has listened, acknowledging the farmers’ demands recently in her daily morning press meetings, Las Mañaneras.  On October 29th, her Secretary of Agriculture, Julio Berdegué, announced proposals to respond to the farmers including a direct payment this year of 950 pesos per ton of corn sold for farmers with farms up to 20 hectares in size (~40 acres) and a subsidized line of credit.  A third proposal from the Mexican government is for a long-term plan to stabilize farmer income by setting a guaranteed reference price for corn that producers, the government, and food processors would negotiate, and also a government-backed initiative to assist with commercialization.  The devil will be in the details, as what that price will be is not clear.

To keep the government honest, many farmers have maintained their protests, especially because the one time direct payment does not reach the producers’ original demand of 7200 pesos per ton of corn.

This ensemble of policies being debated now in Mexico are neither radical nor strange.  Including in the United States, there was the counter-cyclical payment program from 2002-2007 for various commodities when prices fell below a certain threshold.  Another, similar initiative was the non-recourse loan program, which first appeared during the Great Depression to then reappear in 2014.  This program has the government purchase products from farmers to keep reserves, or stocks, when prices fall below a certain level.  The problem in the United States is that the threshold prices in these programs for when the government steps in either to purchase product or offer payments is so low as to make little real difference for most farmers.

US farmers could organize and demand a better floor price in such programs that would cover at minimum the cost of production for their goods, and perhaps a little more so that they earn a profit.  Instead, too often farmers believe that they alone can fix their economic problems, engaging in overproduction, which actually drives prices even further down and often pushes them into environmentally destructive practices.

Also not strange is the idea that American farmers would take to the streets to demand change.  Back in 1979, thousands of farmers drove their tractors to DC to call for fair prices so that they could stay on the land, blocking streets and negotiating with lawmakers on potential policy options.  These actions, while not securing significant changes at the time, did spur subsequent activism and movements to emerge in groups like Farm Aid.

Trump takes farmers’ support for granted.  Look no further than how soy producers were treated during the China trade spat, as if they had no agency and were made into pawns.  Mexican farmers show another way – one where farmers take control over their collective destiny, taking to the streets to call not just for improved economic returns, but dignity.  Producers in the US should follow their lead, perhaps even join them, as not just the Mexican countryside, but the American one needs rescuing and our current administration seems content to let it decline.

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