MEXICO: Countryside Still in Crisis Despite Economic Growth

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, May 20 1998 (IPS) - Although Mexico’s economy continued to grow steadily in the first quarter of the year, the rural sector, where the country’s poorest of the poor grow food for more than 90 million people, remains steeped in crisis.

The Finance Secretariat reported Wednesday that the economy grew an average of 6.6 percent from January to March. The only sector which showed a decline was agriculture, with a fall of six percent.

The Mexican economy has been making steady progress since early 1996, after overcoming the financial crisis unleashed by the late 1994 crash of the peso. Overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which grew seven percent last year, is expected to grow more than five percent this year.

And although officials say the countryside – home to 75 percent of the country’s extremely poor – will soon take part in that growth, the only sector in which projections for the next few months are negative is agriculture.

The situation is not new. The rural sector has consistently showed the worst performance in Mexico in the past 30 years.

On top of the lag in technology and infrastructure faced by farmers, drought and fires caused by the El Nino weather system this year have caused devastating damage, and meteorologists warn that the phenomenon will bring torrential rain and hurricanes next month.

Mexico’s 21 million hectares of agricultural land grow more than 30,000 tonnes of corn, beans, wheat, rice and other basics, and are home to more than 12 million poor and semi-literate peasant farmers, most of whom belong to indigenous communities.

More than 80 percent of Mexico’s malnourished people live in the countryside, while problems of obesity are found almost exclusively in urban areas. A study by the governmental Institute of Social Security and Services found that 86 percent of the one million persons who work for the federal government suffer from obesity and enjoy a sedentary lifestyle with little stress.

By contrast, rural folk face enormous tension due to the shortage of jobs, children are getting smaller and smaller, and according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Fund more than 80 percent of Mexico’s peasant farmers are malnourished, consuming less than the minimum necessary 2,500 calories and 50 grams of protein a day.

When Mexico joined Canada and the United States in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in January 1994, the government promised that foreign investment would pull the rural sector out of its misery.

Four years later, official studies recognise that no major investment was forthcoming, while exports of agricultural goods grew a mere four percent a year, compared to more than 40 percent growth in imports.

NAFTA dealt a heavy blow to the countryside, say opposition parties and peasant groups affiliated with the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

On Nov. 1, 1995, the government of President Ernesto Zedillo launched the Alliance for the Countryside, a programme that promised a decentralisation of support for small farmers, as well as technological assistance, a marketing system and credit.

But while GDP grew 5.2 percent in 1996, growth in the agricultural sector stood at 3.6 percent. And in 1997, when overall growth was seven percent – the highest rate seen in 16 years – agriculture grew a mere one percent.

Moreover, agriculture was one of the few sectors showing a negative performance in the past two years, with quarterly falls of 0.3 to six percent.

The National Confederation of Rural Proprietors contends that the state owes an enormous debt to the countryside, which fails to receive the necessary support in spite of constituting a source of thousands of tonnes of food and abundant, cheap labour for urban areas.