TO BE PUBLISHED IN APPROACHES TO VULNERABILITY: FOOD SYSTEMS AND ENVIRONMENTS IN CRISIS Linda Stephen, Tom Downing, Atiq Rahman, eds. EarthScan

Food security and vulnerability in rural Mexico: A policy issue

Kirsten Appendini, El Colegio de México Beatriz de la Tejera, CRUCO-Universidad Autónoma Chapingo

The Northwestern valley of Toluca is an important corn producing region in Central

México. For over twenty years it has been one of the main providers to the tortilla industry of Mexico City. In order to feed the growing metropolis, a complex system of provisioning was built over decades in which the State played a central role in balancing or solving the dilemma of food prices by subsidizing both farmers and consumers of staple foods. From the seventies on, the small peasant farmers of the Toluca valley were supported into adopting ‘green revolution’ technology and converting their diversified farming strategies into mono-cropping corn for the market. The State agency La Compañía Nacional de

Subsistencias Populares (Conasupo), purchased the crop at support prices, and built up a chain of storage facilities in the farming communities: the state sponsored warehouses,

Bodegas Rurales Conasupo (Boruconsa). From late September to the end of February there was an active coming and going of trucks loading and unloading sacks of grain at village warehouses, and peasants were actively doing their business of selling the yearly harvest.

When we visited the region in September of 2000 the fields were ready to harvest, but the

Boruconsa warehouses were no longer ready to receive the corn. In the community of

Emilio Portes Gil, where one of us had done research in the busy mid-eighties when corn

1 agriculture was at its peak, the warehouse was run-down and there were no signs of harvest activity. On closer observation, we found that the buildings were now used as a dinning hall for the school- children, who were provided with a daily lunch through one of the state sponsored poverty programs. A committee of women were in charge of distributing commercially packed crackers, milk, and cereal to about 100 children who paid one peso

(10 cents) for their lunch.

This change in the daily life of Emilio Portes Gil, illustrates the radical shift in food policy that has taken place in México in the last ten years. Food security as an issue has been subdued, and in any case shifted from production to access, even in the countryside.

As an open economy rapidly integrating into the regional market within the North

American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexican policy makers no longer consider the provisioning of basic food staples to low income populations as an issue to worry about.

Corn is available in the international market and our trade partner, USA, provides 72 percent of the corn produced in the world. Since NAFTA was enforced in 1994, Mexico has imported about 4 million tons of corn on a yearly average, hence increasing its domestic requirements from imports.

This simple solution to access ‘cheap food’ however, poses a number of complex questions.

The impact of free trade on agriculture and the fate of three million Mexican peasants for which corn is the main crop whether for subsistence or for the market was the core of heated debates on the consequences of NAFTA in the early nineties. Analysts foresaw a downfall of production, pressure on the labor markets and increasing migration from the

2 countryside. However trends have not been unilateral and corn production at the national level has been sustained for the last decade. The response of farmers has differed by regions and type of farmers, as has been documented by recent research (Janvry, de et. al. 1997;

World Bank, 1999; SAGAR, nd.).

As we will comment briefly, so far, food security at a national level has not been an issue of concern. However this does not mean that the issue of food security has been solved. There are important concerns that policy-makers are not addressing, and about which little is in fact known, in the rapidly changing context of Mexico and its impact on low-income populations.

In this paper we will refer to the rural population and look at some of the issues concerning food security and vulnerability for a peasantry that is changing its livelihoods within a process in which agriculture is loosing importance as an economic activity and off-farm income together with migration is increasing. What does this mean in terms of access to food and to vulnerability for rural populations?

We will discuss some implications of the food vulnerability rural populations are facing, as production is no longer a prior policy issue while attention is on access to food. This means focusing on different contexts: first of all that of labor markets and non- farm income opportunities. These are the most visible and discussed issues. But there are other aspects we want to bring forth which are given little importance in policy and rural research: that is the question of distribution of food and the functioning of local markets within Mexico.

3 Also the quality of food must be addressed. In the case of Mexico this has to do with the

‘food’ strategies of peasants that are entrenched in their livelihood strategies.

First, we will briefly give an overview of the macro trends in corn supply and how Mexican policy makers have framed ‘food policy’ in the NAFTA context. Next we will discuss the concept of ‘food security’ in this new context in order to look more closely at the consequences for rural populations and the responses that peasant households are having to a changing situation in which their staple food is being caught up in an explicit policy of commodization.

The macro context of ‘food- security’ within NAFTA

The policy context has been the principal determinant of food production and access to food in contemporary Mexico. During the 1990’s, economic and institutional reforms transformed the sectoral framework for agricultural performance. Input and commodity markets were liberalized, which meant harsh cuts in subsidies for farmers. Public credit was reorganized and subsidies were abolished. State intervention through parastatal enterprises that intervened in key commodities such as basic grains, and industrial crops such as coffee, tobacco and sugar cane were abolished. Finally, the institutional legislation on land tenure was modified in order to open up to a more active land market incorporating half of the crop land under the regime of land reform (the ejidos and comunidades agrarias) that had been excluded from the land market for over half a century. By the time NAFTA was launched in 1994, the legal and policy framework for a deregulated agriculture was in place, with the expectations of reactivating agriculture by attracting private investment

(Appendini and Liverman, 1994; Appendini 1998).

4 When negotiating the agricultural chapter of NAFTA, Mexican policy makers tied food security to access to USA grain supply and undermined Mexican farmers, on the grounds of

‘efficiency’ and ‘competitiveness’. At best, corn was giving the longest timing of protection within the process of liberalization as a ‘sensitive crop’ in order to allow for the adjustment of farmers to an open economy regime. Essentially this meant restructuring cropping patterns to more competitive crops and of ‘excess’of ‘excess’ producers to enter labor markets. Hence, corn imports were limited to a quota free of tariff s thatwhich was toould increase by 3 percent % yearly and a high initial tariff (215 percent) that would phase out over a period of 15 years, starting in 1994 when NAFTA was implemented.

By the year 2000, the evolution of the economy and macro policy had helped policy advisers to accelerate the aims of liberalization. Domestic corn prices adjusted rapidly to international prices, as the still existing state marketing Conasupo adjusted support prices downwards. As shown in Graph 1, corn imports have increased with NAFTA, this includes tariff free imports which rose above the quota due to the unilateral decision of the Mexican

Ministry of Trade and Industry to dispense of tariffs on account for the sake of ‘food security’.

[Insert graph 1 Corn Imports]

[Insert graph 2 Relative Prices]

Nonetheless, domestic production maintained a high historical volume of 18 million tons.

This was due to the differential strategies according to types of producers intertwined with

5 the responses of several years of negotiating and adjusting policy changes under President

Salinas government (1989-1994) about the withdrawal of production subsidies and implementation of income subsidies to farmers (Procampo) (Appendini, 1998).

[Insert graph 3 Corn production by region]

Graph 2 shows how the relative prices of corn remained favorable against basic competing crops for which support prices were withdrawn in 1990. This led to an unforeseen response by large farmers on better rain-fed and irrigated land, who rather than converting into high value crops for the export market, took advantage of a favorable conjuncture and converted fields to corn production. Hence, from 1990 onwards, the increase of corn output was mainly due to its growth on irrigated land and in highly commercialized agricultural regions, such as the Northwestern Pacific state of Sinaloa with average yields equitable to

USA farmers (see graph 3). Small farmers and peasants on ejido land, on the other hand, have slowly withdrawn from the corn market. The small, but important segment of peasant surplus producers, for example from the central regions in the States of Jalisco, the Valley of Toluca in the State of Mexico, and the central valleys of the Frailesca in Chiapas, which ten years ago provided the bulk of domestic corn were the most affected by the withdrawal of subsidies. This is because it is no longer economically viable for them to sell corn with increasing costs, lack of credit to improve yields and falling prices.

‘Ya no hay precio’ (There is no price) said the women at the

former Boruconsa warehouse in the ejido of Emilio Portes Gil, in the

Toluca Valley. We only grow for our food. The men have gone away,

6 they will only return to harvest the ‘milpa’ (the maize plot) and store for

our own food. They now work in the city of Toluca or in the ‘Norte’

(North, across the border). I also want to go, perhaps you know of

employment in the houses of Mexico City? I will go, said one, if I can

arrange for my mother to take care of my children.”

In five years (1992-97) the price peasants received for their corn in the village decreased 60 percent in real terms (Wiggins, et. al. 1999). As a consequence of falling prices and the rising costs of inputs, peasants in Emilio Portes Gil, as elsewhere in Mexico, have minimized labor and other inputs. In some places they have reduced the area planted in order to only meet household consumption with a minimum of monetary costs and family labor. In other words, they are abandoning green revolution technology, that is, the use of high yielding hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers, which are expensive and only viable under the subsidized schemes of the 1970s and 1980s. Though this may be

‘environmentally friendly’ it also means decreasing yields and output in peasant agriculture.

In sum, policy decisions attained one of its aims: to discourage the production of millions of what is considered by economic criteria as ‘non-efficient’ producers. At the same time, domestic corn production did not plunge, off-setting the critique of the disaster-discourses promoted by opposition groups, to including corn in NAFTA. Though this was an unexpected outcome, it turned out to be convenient in the official discourse on agricultural performance.

7 Rural livelihood strategies: agriculture and non-farm income

With the reduced importance of agriculture as an economic activity, peasant households are increasingly becoming dependent on non-farm or off-farm income. In fact, rural policies often underline the importance of creating off-farm and non-farm employment opportunities for the rural poor in order to enhance household income. Off-farm income may also enable the rural household to invest in agriculture by providing cash income to purchase inputs and even hire wage-labor, as is often the case in communities where migration is important.

Hence, ‘food security’ no longer depends on subsistence farming, but on other income, whether to directly purchase food or to enable subsistence farming. This means that vulnerability may be shifting from risks within agriculture to other types of risks. That is, formerly risks were associated with internal factors of peasant households, while now risks are associated to external factors such as the labor market and non-farm commodity markets. In other words, risk management has been displaced from the fields – crop diversification, multiple plots, and diversified cultivation practices -- to external contexts.

(Tejera, et. al., 2000).

Recent research underlines these trends in the case of rural Mexico. Surveys in the ejido sector show that during the 1990s, non-farm income for rural households has become more important. In 1994, 46 percent of household income was from non-farm activities, the proportion increased to 55 percent in 1997, in just three years! (World Bank, 1999). Wage labor is the most frequent strategy adopted, 47 percent of ejido households were involved in

8 the off-farm labor market in 1997, but this changed little compared to 1994 (48 percent).

The change in non-farm income sources came from self-employment took participation, as the proportion of households in such activities increased from a mere 9 percent in 1994 to

24 percent in 1997 (idem.:11). This confirms that the diversification of income sources, a characteristic of peasant households for several decades, became accentuated in the nineties. It also shows that wage work does not seem to be the overall opportunity offered to peasants and their families. The rate of growth in self-employment may well indicate that rural households are facing constrained labor markets, both at the local and regional levels.

The increasing importance of migration is a consequence of the narrow income opportunities. According to the World Bank ejido survey, 80 percent of households had a family member residing outside the households and 45 percent had a member who had migrated to the USA (World Bank, 1999:15). In 1998, the estimated flow of remittances to

Mexico was around 5.6 billion dollars and one out of ten households in localities of less than 2500 inhabitants received remittances (Mohar, nd:30). By 2002, remittances were estimated at 9.5 billion dollars (Banco de México, 2003).

Whether wages and non-farm income are factors that reduce food insecurity vulnerability does not have a straightforward answer. Empirical evidence has not really confronted the taken-for-granted recommendation that off-farm income opportunities are positive for rural households. However, this may not generally be the case, as rural households often face low paid jobs, dead end labor markets or ‘refuge employment’ as acknowledged by

Reardon’s (2000) work revising country case studies on rural off-farm employment.

9 In the case of Mexico, the MMIP index (method of integrated poverty measurement) elaborated by Julio Boltivinik shows that rural poverty is extremely high, estimated at 93.5 percent of rural population in the year 2000, with little change in a decade ( the percentage was 94.9 in 1993)1. The income component of the index shows an increase in poverty for rural populations from 84.8 to 89.5 percent of rural population from 1992 to 2000, mainly balanced by the unsatisfied basic needs component which show people to be better off due to health and educational services which are provided by the state. This latter show and improvement from 86.4 percent of rural population being in the category of unsatisfied basic needs to 79.6 percent in the same period (Damian and Boltvinik, 2003).

Low income households have fended off income declines mainly by having more members of the household enter into the workforce. Real minimum wages have declined by

30 percent from 1990 to 2000, and the gap for unskilled labor compared to skilled labor has widened considerably, pointing to the vulnerability of labor markets that are accessible to rural people who are by large unskilled.

There is reason for serious concern that labor markets do not necessarily mean better income opportunities, nor does self-employment. The 1997 World Bank survey of the ejido sector found that the association between lower poverty and non-farm income though positive, is mediated by the type of employment in which rural households engage. Hence,

‘households engaged in commerce related activities were less likely to be poor than

1 The MMIP index has three components: the poverty line (LP) which measures income; the unsatisfied basic needs (NBI) such as access to health and education and Time Poverty which refers to a person’s lack of time for domestic chores, education and leisure on account of over work.

10 households engaged in casual non-agricultural or manufacturing labor’ (World Bank,

1999:38).

Case studies carried out in 1998 and 1999 in five migrant communities in the Sierra Júarez, in the Southwestern state of Oaxaca, Mexico, showed that households who have commerce as the main economic activity have the highest average annual income (81 900 pesos) whereas households largely dependent on migrant remittances only report an average annual income of 24 450 pesos. However, only a few households in each village are able to engage in the more profitable activities such as trade, since this requires capital resources, both financial as well as human. Other activities that generate cash income are forestry, services and wage employment in the locality or the nearest largest city, Oaxaca; agriculture and livestock activities are also carried out, but they generate little cash income.

In three of the villages studies, over 50 percent of the households received their main income from remittances (Tejera, et. al. 2000). Remittances are often viewed as a temporary solution to income stress for the rural poor but they are no guarantee to avoid vulnerability. In the communities referred to, the average annual income for households dependent on remittances was 416 dollars, placing these households under conventional poverty lines.

In the completely different context of the corn growing communities of theof the Northern

Valley of Toluca, non-farm income sources have not proven to be a way out of poverty either. The main non-farm occupation and source of employment in Emilio Portes GilOrtiz

Rubio is wage work (81 and petty trade, households fabricate items from natural fibers used for cleaning that the men peddle beyond the region. Women´s main off-farm employment is

11 in domestic service in the cities of Toluca and Mexico City. The kind of activities that people have access to are low technology, add little value added and generate low income, in average only slightly above the minimum wage. Not only that, the general decrease in real income at the local, regional and national level has an impact on demand for goods and services. As assessed by Wiggins et. al. with the crisis of agriculture, local demand has faulted and transaction costs for example in petty trade have increased, as the cost of transport has gone up and traders have to seek markets as far away as Yucatán to sell their goods. In Emilio Portes Gil, 28 percent of the households have average per capita incomes of 446 US dollars per year and 38 percent have average per capita incomes of 645, hence by rough criteria, 66 percent of the households can be classified as ‘poor’ (Wiggins, et. al.

1999).

Distribution of food: local markets and poverty programs

In the latter decade, as already said, policy has aimed to resolve food insecurity only at the national level by emphasizing supply side integration into NAFTA. At the local and household level, broader concerns such as the provisioning of cheap food through general consumption subsidies have been phased out since the eighties, ending decades of cheap basic foods that had mainly benefited urban populations (Appendini, 2001).

Today, food subsidies are narrowly targeted and are articulated allocated to poverty alleviation programs. This means that broader concerns such as distribution of basic grains and the functioning of regional and local markets are no longer policy issues. Until the late nineties, the state agency Conasupo still played an important role in rural storage and the

12 distribution of corn to larger urban areas. A program of state sponsored stores (Diconsa) carrying staples was part of the distribution system, which also reached the countryside.

Maize sold in these stores has mainly been imported grain. For domestic varieties, the countryside was dependent on self-provision or on grain merchants. However, if rural localities are to become increasingly dependent on the market, there are issues to be addressed as to the how this will function on a larger scale. Information on regional and local corn markets is scarce, not having been the objective of research nor policy focus in the transition towards privatization.

A recent study points to the fact that the distribution system, based on Conasupo storage facilities and intervention, was highly inefficient. The study also shows that the Center,

Gulf and Peninsula regions of Mexico are deficit in corn output and hence net importers from other regions (García Salazar, 1999).2 The Center comprehends the most densely populated areas in Mexico, and the countryside is still predominated by peasant agriculture highly involved in non-farm activities. The Gulf and Peninsula is characterized by low population density, livestock and commercial agriculture alongside subsistence agriculture.

The Southern regions, where the poorest states are located, (Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca) are surplus corn producers. On the one hand, This is mainly due to a small region of high yield production in the Frailesca, Chiapas and to the persistence of subsistence agriculture throughout the region.

2 The Center region comprehends the states of: Mexico, Morelos, Hidalgo, Puebla, Tlaxacala , Querétaro and the City of Mexico. The Gulf: Veracruz and Tabasco; and the Peninsula: Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo.

13 In some case studies it has been observed that local markets function within micro-regions.

Such was the case of a number of communities among 13 cases studied in the central valleys of Oaxaca, in which communities that produced a surplus sold corn to neighboring villages. Hence, intra-community trade was established within a region which thus attained self-sufficiency (Santos, de la Tejera, et. al., 1987). How these regional and local markets function is an open question in need of research.

The needs of the most vulnerable populations are the concern of poverty alleviation programs. The most important of these is Progresa initiated in 1997, in 2002 this program renamed Oportunidades, which covers about 3.2 million families. The Program comprehends subsidies to education, health care and nutrition (World Bank, 2000:84). The nutrition component comprehends a monthly payment for a fixed amount of money to each family in the program. This payment is conditioned to the attendance to the local health clinic (the health component ) but not to the use of the money for food or other basic items.

In 1999 this amount was an average of 115 pesos per family (about 13 US dollars). A cash income which may be used freely by the family.

This is a very neo-liberal concept of food subsidies compared to former programs, in which families were given access to cheap tortillas with special credentials (mainly in urban localities) or the general subsidies in which access to cheap basic food items were given through local rural stores of the Conasupo/Diconsa system (Appendini, 2001). Other food programs such as those directed to school children, or the provision of basic food items through special programs including the distribution of milk and the remaining

Conasupo/Diconsa stores. These stores have been reduced by 36 and 18 percent from 1998-

14 99 (Scott, 1999). The concern for food security at the micro level has, thus been targeted to the poorest households, enabling an increase in consumption through a monetary transfer but without specific concern of neither the intra-household distribution of benefits nor the quality of food. Nonetheless, the preferences are respected, since the transfer may be spent on any item the family chooses.

Rural households and ‘food strategies’:

‘ The Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action lay the foundations for diverse paths to a common objective - food security, at the individual, household, national, regional and global levels. Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.’ (FAO, 1996).

‘ Food policy’ in the Mexican context, has been concerned only with the quantitative supply of food at the national level, and at the household and individual level. For the latter, the focus has been targeted and comprehends only about 10 percent of total households classified as those in extreme poverty. But other issues included in the FAO definition of

‘food security’ are of no importance, such as safe and nutritious food and food preferences.

The case of corn is particularly important for some of these issues because of the differences in the varieties of corn. In Mexico, native corn varieties (criollo) including

15 white corn are used for human consumption, whereas yellow corn is not well suited nor voluntarily accepted for making the tortilla and other foods based on corn. Nonetheless, imported corn of the yellow varieties is used as imported in the food industry, including that used for the tortilla. The fact that corn varieties are not distinguished in the international market means that Mexican varieties of corn for human consumption are now competing with yellow corn used for animal feed in most parts of the world. As dependency on imports increase, the concept of nutritious and preferences are subject of debate. The nutritious properties of yellow and white or native corns are similar3, but white or native corn is preferred for making the tortilla because of consistency, flexibility and taste. Of concern is also the concept of safe food, since in the past there have been problems of corn containing toxins and today there is no control of the import of transgenic corn, while the use of transgenic seed is still banned in Mexico.

The issue of the quality of food (nutritious and preferences) is however an issue of importance for Mexico’s rural population. Rural households have explicit strategies of food procurement by cultivating their land with corn for self-consumption. The ‘milpa’, the plot of land on which corn is cultivated, has traditionally been associated with other food crops such as beans, squash and different herbs and is central to peasant livelihoods. Households will often invest both labor and other resources in order to guarantee the corn that complies with their preferences and nutritional requirements. This often means that households are willing to subsidize subsistence agriculture by growing their own corn under conditions that would not be considered ‘efficient’ by economic accounting criteria. In the case of Emilio

3 This refers to contents of protein and minerals. See USDA Nutrient Data Base for Standard Reference www.nalusda.gov/fnic

16 Portes Gil in the Valley of Toluca, households still grow corn for subsistence, but yields have stagnated since the days of commercial corn production (2.3 tons per hectare in 1985 and in 1997/98)4. According to an estimate based on production costs and price of corn per ton provided by Wiggins et. al. (1999), the cost of cultivation is 24 percent above the price, hence households are willing to invest family labor, even wage labor and fertilizers in growing their food staples.5 According to the authors of the case studies, the reasons are that:

“..small holders in [Ortíz Rubio] sow maize to ensure their subsistence

and reproduction. Faced by the insecurities in labour markets, and

problems in diversifying their crop, they grew maize to have ready access

to staple food and fuel (from the stover). Moreover, they produced high

quality maize, better than that sold by traders who tended to mix good

maize with that destined for animals” (Wiggins, et. al., 1999:81).

It is significant that it is the households belonging to high and middle income groups who are the ones likely to produce their own food, hence the quality tortilla may be becoming a .luxury item! 6

InA similar situation can be found in the communities of the Sierra Juárez in

Oaxaca, formerly referred to (see page 10),. all peasant households make tortillas. They Do

4 1985 data from Appendini 1988; Wiggins et al 1999. 5 The estimated cost for growing a hectare of corn was 435 US$ while the market value was 331 US$ in 1997/98 (Wiggins, et. al., 1999: 44-45). 6 There is already an urban market for traditional-made higher priced tortillas in some urban areas, they are sold house to house and in restaurants.

17 you mean that in Sierra Juarez the expenditure on corn production is so high that only wealthy families can produce it optimally? Please explain the link with the previous paragraph. There peasant households invest an average of 1490 pesos in wage payments, plus 408 pesos in inputs and 465 pesos for traction for each ton of corn produced. The highest price obtained per ton was 1250 pesos; hence peasants subsidized the cost of their corn (1113 pesos) by 53 percent by transferring money from other income sources. It is important to notice that this accounting does not include family labor, which would increase the subsidy substantially. Also, in the case of this particular region, the ‘peasant’ subsidy is given on a very small scale since the average yields are 754 kilos per hectare and the area cultivated is only 1.3 hectares per household. That is, each family only produces 820 kilos per year on which it spends 912 pesos. The key question is then, why are these families willing to invest this amount of resources to obtain food? When, as is the case in these communities, low quality and cheaper corn can be bought in the village stores supplied through the state sponsored Diconsa program and also that ready made tortillas

(made from that cheap corn) are also sold from special shops (tortillerías). Our hypothesis is that households prefer to be able to consume a high quality corn, and if they are deficit producers, they will allocate their own grown corn for special periods of the year. For example, corn grown by the household was used during the months when the migrants returned to visit their families or for village festivities. Hence peasant households continue to grow corn and make their own tortillas.

Final remarks

The issue of vulnerability of the rural population has acquired increasingly complex dimensions as policy has shifted away from a focus on production in the context of NAFTA

18 and undermined policies that support agricultural performance in food crops. As a result , at the national level the dimensions of food security, such as autonomy and self- determination, which reduce vulnerability to market fluctuations as well as social and political pressures, have been foregone. Policy is concerned with the simplest form of food security, that is, supply focused and includes integration into NAFTA.

Distribution, and hence regional and local access are not part of policy concern, they are now left to market forces. Food security at the local and household level are addressed mainly through the food security component of the poverty alleviation program Progresa or

Oportunidades, and is narrowly focused on the target population and hence not considered along with the broader issues of food security that rural households face in a changing environment. A trend in rural economies is that risk and vulnerability factors are being more and more placed outside the sphere of farming and there is an increased reliance more on labor markets and other non-farm activities. At the same time, agricultural activities are not disappearing overall. Rural households seem often to prioritize growing maize and other basic food crops such as beans, squash and other edible plants on their small plots.

This may be due to two factors: one is that land still provides cheap food because it involves family labor with low opportunity costs. The other is that peasants are concerned with issues of food security that are seldom incorporated into policies: safe and nutritious food. Hence, peasant households are showing their preferences for maize that is white or criollo, with a seed that is not transgenic, for a tortilla made in the traditional way, from grounded corn as opposed to the industrialized tortilla made of corn flour.

19 As macro policy trends are pushing the national supply of cheap food, the concern for preferences on the grounds of nutritious and safe, as well as quality of food may be the reason for subsistence farming to persist in the future. This is not only an issue of food security at the household level but is entrenched in the livelihoods of rural families that are struggling to build up complex strategies in changing contexts, in which farm and non-farm activities are interdependent and in which the land and subsistence farming is still the core of livelihoods. Rural livelihoods hold together the complex social and cultural fabric of increasingly transnational and economically complex rural communities.

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