The Debate Over Food Sovereignty in Mexico

In 2007 a popular movement called "Sin maíz no hay país y sin frijol tampoco" emerged in Mexico, in response to the domestic food crisis. This was conceived as the leading edge of the 2007 and 2008 global food crises. The movement advocated for the protection of domestic staple agriculture and food sovereignty. It sought to create fair competition between US and Mexican farmers by encouraging the re-negotiation of the Agricultural Chapter of NAFTA; and to defend native varieties of corn against their replacement with GM. This presentation examines responses by both Mexican society and state to this food crisis. It focuses on meanings, ideas, actions, relationships, and processes that dominant and popular groups set in motion. It identifies the ways in which the Mexican neoliberal state has manipulated the market according to the principles of “competitive and comparative advantages,” to redistribute public resources unequally among producers and to open Mexican food market to imports. It argues that the Mexican state’s food market interventions are contradictory since (1) it legitimizes neoliberalism by claiming that the market should be the only force shaping internal production; and (2) Mexican agriculture is more exposed than ever to the negative impacts of global trade. Accordingly, Sin maíz no hay país is an illustration of less-privileged farmers and urban groups’ struggle against Mexico´s neoliberal food and agriculture policies and global food market instability, while promoting small-scale staple farming.

Full-time Professor-researcher, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Guadalajara, Mexico, and level III researcher, Sistema Nacional de Investigadores. Rodríguez Gómez has conducted research on Mexican and Spain rural sector, commodity chains, staple food, popular movements against NAFTA and neoliberalism, small-scale farming since 1994. From 2009 on she has been coordinating evaluations of Mexican Public policies for the National Ministry of Agriculture, the Forestry National Commission, and for the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL). Some of her publications are La paradoja de la calidad: Alimentos mexicanos en la región de América del Norte (2011); El frijol en México. Elementos para una agenda de soberanía alimentaria (2006); Strategies for resource management, production and marketing in rural Mexico (2000); and “Crisis alimentaria vis-a-vis crisis financiera” (2009).

Food Sovereignty: a critical dialogue, 14 - 15 September, New Haven.