IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v27y2010i1p13-28.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Institutional support and in situ conservation in Mexico: biases against small-scale maize farmers in post-NAFTA agricultural policy

Author

Listed:
  • Alder Keleman

Abstract

One of the major adjustments brought on by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a change in the relationship between Mexican agricultural support institutions and the small-scale agricultural sector. Post-NAFTA restructuring programs sought to correct previous inefficiencies in this sector, but they have also had the effect of marginalizing the producers who steward and manage the country’s reserve of maize (Zea mays) genetic diversity. Framed by research suggesting that certain maize varieties in a rain-fed farming region in southern Sonora are in danger of loss due chiefly to long-term drought, this article explores the ramifications of post-NAFTA agricultural policies for in situ maize diversity conservation. Qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews with agricultural support institutions and participant observation with farmers, were used to gather data on dryland farmers’ access to research and extension, as well as possibilities for collective action. In southern Sonora, agricultural support is oriented primarily toward high-tech production, and there are structural barriers to small-scale farmers’ access to research and extension institutions. Further, collective action around agriculture is limited. These circumstances represent significant limitations to farmers’ options for accessing new techniques which might help maintain maize diversity in the context of economic and environmental change. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Suggested Citation

  • Alder Keleman, 2010. "Institutional support and in situ conservation in Mexico: biases against small-scale maize farmers in post-NAFTA agricultural policy," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 27(1), pages 13-28, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:27:y:2010:i:1:p:13-28
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-009-9192-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-009-9192-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-009-9192-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elizabeth Fitting, 2006. "Importing Corn, Exporting Labor: The Neoliberal Corn Regime, GMOs, and the Erosion of Mexican Biodiversity," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 23(1), pages 15-26, March.
    2. Shriar, Avrum J., 2002. "Food security and land use deforestation in northern Guatemala," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 395-414, August.
    3. de Janvry, Alain & Sadoulet, Elisabeth & de Anda, Gustavo Gordillo, 1995. "NAFTA and Mexico's maize producers," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(8), pages 1349-1362, August.
    4. Peter Klepeis & Colin Vance, 2003. "Neoliberal Policy and Deforestation in Southeastern Mexico: An Assessment of the PROCAMPO Program," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 79(3), pages 221-240, July.
    5. Bellon, Mauricio R. & Adato, Michelle & Becerril, Javier & Mindek, Dubravka, 2003. "The impact of improved maize germplasm on poverty alleviation," FCND discussion papers 162, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    6. Barbier, Edward B., 2000. "Links between economic liberalization and rural resource degradation in the developing regions," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 299-310, September.
    7. Levy, Santiago & van Wijnbergen, Sweder, 1992. "Maize and the Free Trade Agreement between Mexico and the United States," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 6(3), pages 481-502, September.
    8. James J. Biles & Bruce W. Pigozzi, 2000. "The Interaction of Economic Reforms, Socio‐economic Structure and Agriculture in Mexico," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 3-22.
    9. Bellon, Mauricio R. & Adato, Michelle & Becerril, Javier & Mindek, Dubravka, 2005. "Impact of Improved Maize Germplasm on Poverty Alleviation: The Case of Tuxpeno-Derived Materials in Mexico," Impact Studies 7658, CIMMYT: International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eakin, Hallie & Appendini, Kirsten & Sweeney, Stuart & Perales, Hugo, 2015. "Correlates of Maize Land and Livelihood Change Among Maize Farming Households in Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 78-91.
    2. Dayal Talukder, 2014. "Agricultural Trade Liberalization and Poverty in Rural Bangladesh," Poverty & Public Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(3), pages 282-307, September.
    3. Matthew C. LaFevor & Alexandra G. Ponette-González & Rebecca Larson & Leah M. Mungai, 2021. "Spatial Targeting of Agricultural Support Measures: Indicator-Based Assessment of Coverages and Leakages," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, July.
    4. Matthew C. LaFevor, 2022. "Spatial and Temporal Changes in Crop Species Production Diversity in Mexico (1980–2020)," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-14, July.
    5. Hallie Eakin & Hugo Perales & Kirsten Appendini & Stuart Sweeney, 2014. "Selling Maize in Mexico: The Persistence of Peasant Farming in an Era of Global Markets," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 45(1), pages 133-155, January.
    6. Rocío Blanco-Gregory & Leonor Elena López-Canto & María Victoria Sanagustín-Fons & Violante Martínez-Quintana, 2020. "Agroecological Entrepreneurship, Public Support, and Sustainable Development: The Case of Rural Yucatan (Mexico)," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(11), pages 1-24, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Blake, Adam & Gomez-Plana, Antonio Gomez & Latorre Munoz, María C., 2005. "Macroeconomic effects of foreign direct investment in the Spanish economy," Conference papers 331357, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    2. Antonio Turrent Fernández & Timothy A. Wise & Elise Garvey, 2012. "Achieving Mexico’s Maize Potential," GDAE Working Papers 12-03, GDAE, Tufts University.
    3. Yankuic Galvan-Miyoshi & Robert Walker & Barney Warf, 2015. "Land Change Regimes and the Evolution of the Maize-Cattle Complex in Neoliberal Mexico," Land, MDPI, vol. 4(3), pages 1-24, August.
    4. Bellon, Mauricio R. & Hellin, Jon, 2011. "Planting Hybrids, Keeping Landraces: Agricultural Modernization and Tradition Among Small-Scale Maize Farmers in Chiapas, Mexico," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(8), pages 1434-1443, August.
    5. Barbier, Edward B., 2000. "Links between economic liberalization and rural resource degradation in the developing regions," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 299-310, September.
    6. Mejia, Maria & Peel, Derrell S., 2009. "Determining the Feasibility of Yellow Corn Production in Mexico," 2009 Annual Meeting, January 31-February 3, 2009, Atlanta, Georgia 46741, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    7. Schmook, Birgit & Vance, Colin, 2009. "Agricultural Policy, Market Barriers, and Deforestation: The Case of Mexico's Southern Yucatn," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1015-1025, May.
    8. Steve Boucher & J. Edward Taylor, 2006. "Subsistence Response to Market Shocks," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 88(2), pages 279-291.
    9. Christopher B. Busch & Colin Vance, 2011. "The Diffusion of Cattle Ranching and Deforestation: Prospects for a Hollow Frontier in Mexico’s Yucatán," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 87(4), pages 682-698.
    10. Barbier, Edward B., 2004. "Agricultural Expansion, Resource Booms and Growth in Latin America: Implications for Long-run Economic Development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 137-157, January.
    11. de Janvry, Alain & Sadoulet, Elisabeth & de Anda, Gustavo Gordillo, 1995. "NAFTA and Mexico's maize producers," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(8), pages 1349-1362, August.
    12. Chibwana, Christopher & Fisher, Monica & Shively, Gerald, 2012. "Cropland Allocation Effects of Agricultural Input Subsidies in Malawi," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 124-133.
    13. J. C. Burgess, 1998. "Economic analysis of deforestation in Mexico," Chapters, in: The Economics of Environment and Development, chapter 10, pages 183-222, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Hornung, Erik & Hidalgo, Eduardo & Selaya, Pablo, 2022. "NAFTA and drug-related violence in Mexico," CEPR Discussion Papers 17608, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Calum Brown & Dave Murray-Rust & Jasper van Vliet & Shah Jamal Alam & Peter H Verburg & Mark D Rounsevell, 2014. "Experiments in Globalisation, Food Security and Land Use Decision Making," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-24, December.
    16. Elena Ianchovichina & Alessandro Nicita & Isidro Soloaga, 2002. "Trade Reform and Poverty: The Case of Mexico," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(7), pages 945-972, July.
    17. Demeke, Bayou, 2004. "Is Globalization Bad For The Environment? International Trade And Land Degradation In Developing Countries:The Case Of Small Open Economy," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 20376, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    18. Reardon, Thomas & Barrett, Christopher B., 2000. "Agroindustrialization, globalization, and international development: An overview of issues, patterns, and determinants," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 195-205, September.
    19. Philippe Delacote, 2008. "The Safety-net Use of Non Timber Forest Products," Working Papers - Cahiers du LEF 2008-04, Laboratoire d'Economie Forestiere, AgroParisTech-INRA.
    20. Ellis, Edward A. & Romero Montero, José Arturo & Hernández Gómez, Irving Uriel & Porter-Bolland, Luciana & Ellis, Peter W., 2017. "Private property and Mennonites are major drivers of forest cover loss in central Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 474-484.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:27:y:2010:i:1:p:13-28. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.