The Mexican government's plan to promote oil-producing crops like canola is being challenged by experts. “Instead of promoting subsidies for maize crops, they are promoting this type of profitable crop,” Yolanda Massieu, from the Autonomous Metropolitan University of Mexico, told Tierramérica.

According to the National Oleaginous Product Committee, Mexico imports some eight million tons of these oil-producing crops per year, and more than one million tons is canola, at a cost of more than 400 million dollars.

To reduce foreign purchases, the Committee, comprising officials and producers, aims to expand crops in 2010 to eight million hectares of canola to produce vegetable oil. Currently there are about four million hectares of canola planted.

“The problem is that agro-industry makes the decisions about the plans,” said Massieu.