Jalisco’s Revolution: An alternative development model to keep people home

Global Exchange
May 05, 2008
By Angela Walker

Jalisco, Mexico—The barren cornfields appear startled absent the hands that have tilled it for thousands of years. In the little rancho of Ojo de Agua, hidden in the mountains northeast of Guadalajara, Maria points with pride at the Virgin Mary holograms on her adobe wall, gifts from her four sons now working as busboys in Los Angeles.

The financially ruined farm has forced more of her 17 children to flee to the United States. The ones who remain feed themselves by pepenando—a term once restricted to scrounging city trashcans, now applies to the country where children salvage corn day laborers miss in the neighboring industrial farm fields of El Cuatro. Eyes welling, Maria cracks, "It's gotten so sad, the life of the campo."

The opening of Mexico's markets—beginning in the 1980's following its entry into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and locked in with the passage of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)—has been met with the depopulation of the Mexican countryside and a surge in U.S. emigration, the rate of which has doubled since NAFTA. While rural dwellers account for only 25% of Mexico's population, they comprise 44% of the half million migrants who cross the U.S. border each year.

Part of the explanation is that 44 million tons of heavily subsidized U.S. corn has flooded the Mexican market since NAFTA—impossible competition for smaller domestic farmers. Additionally, maíz mejorado, or genetically modified (GM) corn—primarily sold by U.S. corporations, including Monsanto and DuPont—is rapidly overtaking traditional maíz criollo, terrain-specific corn developed over 5,000 years. Maíz mejorado requires the increasing use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides—also sold by Monsanto and DuPont—which degrade the soil. Campesinos lured into growing GM corn, like Maria, eventually discover they cannot afford the increasing inputs. By then their land is damaged, and will take 10-15 years to regenerate.

"Agricultural activities have ceased to be economically viable for the small and medium-sized producers, who comprise 87% of Mexican farmers," says agronomist Jaime Morales Hernández of ITESO University. The resulting poverty has pushed millions of farmers off their land.

While larger changes to trade policy are required to address poverty and rising migration rates, local initiatives centered on organic, Fair Trade farming are moving forward and strengthening rural economies and production capacities throughout Mexico.

Organizations, networks of farmers and universities have teamed up to assist the now more than 2,000 rural communities that are creating alternatives. Organic agriculture has rocketed from 23,265 hectares in 1996 to 308,000 hectares in 2005—and consequently increased the number of jobs.

In 1999, Hernández co-founded the Network for Sustainable Agriculture Alternatives (RASA), a "local initiative that aims to strengthen sustainable regional development," he says. RASA is popularizing the farmer-to-farmer agro-ecology sustainable development model, which links efforts to increase production with natural resource conservation.

As forward moving as these initiatives are, they will not stop depopulation trends without the public policy and financial support now focused on commercial agriculture. And with 30 people leaving the countryside to migrate north each hour, the shortage of young people threatens their future. While NAFTA's shortcomings have been spotlighted in the U.S. Presidential race, determined campesinos cannot wait for larger development policies to catch on.

Support to vulnerable farmers is a crucial step in enabling Mexicans to stay home and should be a centerpiece in efforts to stabilize Mexican sending communities. Such efforts must be at the heart of renegotiating trade pacts and sustainable immigration reforms.

Take Action