Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

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agroecology and the struggle for food sovereignty
Figure 1. Agricultural and food trade balances
t
h
o
u
s
a
n
d
s
o
f
d
o
l
l
a
r
s
1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
0
-500,000
-1,000,000
-1,500,000
-2,000,000
-2,500,000
-3,000,000
1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003
Agriculture
Food
Mexico’s foreign trade in agricultural products has grown rapidly since NAFTA (the North American
Free Trade Agreement) took effect in 1994. However, while policy designers have touted the growth in
Mexican exports as an achievement of the treaty, there has also been a major increase in imports to
Mexico City. The country’s agricultural and food trade balances have been negative in every year of
NAFTA, except during 1995, when the devaluation of the peso functioned like a tariff. The food and
agriculture trade deficit has grown consistently, reaching US$4 billion in the year 2003. Source: Alberto
Gómez Flores, 2004. Liberalización agrícola y soberanía alimentaria. México: Unión Nacional de
Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autónomas (UNORCA).
This run-down house in the town of Providencia, in
the southwestern part of the state of Durango,
Mexico, represents an all-too-common scene in the
Mexican countryside as rural incomes decline and
residents migrate to cities or to the U.S. in search of
work. Multiple times, various inhabitants of these
rooms emigrated to the city of Juarez and to a
nearby town where they still live in poverty.
Workshop participant José Montenegro, who hails
from the town, writes: “Just the way those rooms
look in the picture is how many, many, many houses
look in rural towns in Mexico with high flows of
emigration. Like my town, these towns are becoming
ghost towns. To me, the picture depicts shattered hopes and hard times.” Photographer: José
Montenegro.
Growing Resistance
Still, Dawkins also emphasized, there is one positive outcome of this “change from
countries to corporations as the drivers of economic policy.” “Small producers,
environmentalists, consumers, and all these other interest groups, North and South,”
yale school of forestry & environmental studies