Mexican agriculture and NAFTA

[david barkin <d_barkin@xxxxxxxxx>]

In response to Julio H's Comments about the impact of
NAFTA on Mexican farmers:

There has been a surprising and poorly appreciated
recuperation  of Mexican rainfed (dryland) agriculture
that I have commented on before to Pen-L.  The country
has unexpectedly recuperated self-sufficiency in white
corn production for human consumption in response to
an institutional restructuring of "dirt farmers"
(peasants) who have ceased selling much of their crop
as grain and instead are processing it themselves as
value added products, from (not so) simple tortillas
to other more elaborate products -- output increased
as much as 30% in five years, mostly the result of
significant increases in productivity; this occurred
along with the feminization of the labor force in
rural areas and other notable changes that have led to
the further diversification of income sources and
productive activites that has created a surprisingly
less crisis driven rural sector than confronts the
rest of the working poor in urban and periurban areas
-- These structural changes have NOT been incorporated
into the analyses of most macroeconomists, who tend to
shun developments in rural areas as irrelevant.

(One important bit of information: official rural
population estimates of 22% of the total are far off
the mark of a more realistic figure of 35-39% of the
population, with tremendous implications for political
behavior and economic resilency.)  More on this at the
URPE summer camp later this week!

David Barkin

Julio's comment:
Traditional corn producers suffered.  This wasn't so
much NAFTA as the conditions imposed on Mexico by
Clinton-Rubin, when they gave Zedillo the credit line
to reboot the economy in 1995.  Truth be told, NAFTA
didn't provide for opening the gates to U.S. corn in
1995, but Zedillo -- pressured by transnational junk
food makers and the producers of sweets and beverages
-- to let corn and corn syrup be imported, and Zedillo
had discretionary powers to do that.  That changed
somewhat when the economy recovered, but the damage
had been done.  I'm sure David Barkin knows more (or
better) about this than me -- he may want to say
something about it.



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