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On The Fight to Save the Traditional Tortilla for @TedNordhaus nytimes.com/2018/12/21/din…. No doubt that traditional handmade tortillas are delicious but
if made from scratch, they involve 5 hours hard labor to feed a family of four or five. Traditionally they were the food of the rural poor while town dwellers, particularly the more affluent, ate white bread. Now
that Mexico is 80% urban, most women work, and income has risen, all interlinked obviously, most women have made the conscious decision to trade store bought tortillas or bread and rice for homemade tortillas. At the same time, though,
that is since the 1950s, maize has been promoted as the symbol of Mexican identity, first in celebration of mestizaje following the Mexican Revolution,
more recently in the construction of Mexico's successful application to have its cuisine recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/din…
So now well-to-do Mexicans mourn the passing of the hand made tortilla. Cross that with a growing belief among many environmentalists that seeds should be saved in situ rather than in seed banks
and that the diversity of maize is diminishing and there is a movement to encourage the rural poor to grow landraces that can be sold at a higher price than the commercially-grown maize of Mexico to preserve both landraces and rural poor.
There are a number of problems with this. First, it's not clear that maize grown in traditional ways can ever fetch a high enough price to give the growers a decent standard of living, short of, say, a large govt subsidy.
Second, the chefs north and south of the border who have been encouraged to buy land race maize and promote tortillas in their restaurants are having a steep learning curve because they have no idea how to make tortillas--they were always bought in (see bread)
Third, the assumption that landrace maize is necessarily more delicious than the white hybrid corn grown commercially in Mexico is dubious. Many land races were selected for reasons other than taste (ability to survive drought, colors for religious rituals).
Fourth, many landraces are already crossed with hybrid maize and since, maize is so variable, it's not clear how old they are or how worrying losing them is.
The article does point to one important point. I've heard it argued that the mechanization of tortilla making, which remains pretty Heath Robinson-ish, was retarded for years because until NAFTA the subsidization of tortillas for city dwellers meant no financial incentive.
So I'd like to see investment in tortilla-making machinery (I think it's there) and commercial production of white hybrid maize supplemented by serious analysis and commercialization of land races if appropriate.
Oh and by the by, most of the American maize imported by Mexico goes to animal feed not to the tortilla industry.
Which is to say the the NYT reporting of this food and ag issue offers as little context as most of its reporting on these matters. iAnd that this is more than @TedNordhaus wanted to know about maize and more than enough to get me into hot water.
