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Sorghum and the Mexican Food Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2022

David Barkin  and
Billie R. DeWalt
David Barkin
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma, Metropolitana, Xochimilco
Billie R. DeWalt
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
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Mexico achieved food self-sufficiency and raised rural living standards in the thirty years prior to the mid-sixties, yet the country is now plagued by a profound agricultural crisis that is manifesting itself in serious natural resource disequilibria, unemployment and underemployment, and inadequate food production. This seemingly contradictory outcome has resulted from an agricultural growth strategy that reoriented production toward agroexports and animal feeds. Understanding the effects of this strategy is essential because these same trends are the most important phenomena in the agricultural sector of many developing countries today (Barr 1981; Winrock International 1981; DeWalt 1983).

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , 1988 , pp. 30 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

The authors coordinated a collaborative project between the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and the International Sorghum-Millet Collaborative Research Support Program (INTSORMIL) to examine sorghum in agroecosystems in Mexico. The support of our INTSORMIL contract is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks also go to Frank Cancian, Kathleen M. DeWalt, Jonathan Fox, Joseph Willett, and John van Willigen for comments on previous drafts of this article.

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