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Sustainable
Rural Development
This research is part of a broader effort to assess the ways in which peasant production can be revalued under the pressure of globalization. Economic integration contributes to downward pressure on commodity prices for peasant producers previously protected or disconnected from the global market. Market-based definitions of efficiency, defined simply as “yield” by industrial agriculture, leave positive and negative externalities that are exacerbated in the integration process. Traditional producers in Mexico see little or no value in the marketplace for their social and environmental contributions. In the global marketplace, these positive externalities meet the North’s negative externalities from industrialized agriculture, including the large uncovered costs of unsustainable water use and excessive use of agrochemicals. The result has been referred to as the globalization of market failure.
This project seeks to identify ways in which the positive externalities of small-scale Mexican production can be recognized, either through the marketplace (e.g., in Fair Trade markets) or through government policies. Research has focused on Mexico's largest export crop, coffee, and its largest domestic food crop, maize. Timothy A. Wise directs this research. Wise is also developing a book manuscript that brings together research on Mexican peasant producers – in maize, coffee, and other sectors – to further develop and disseminate the argument for revaluing peasant production.
Key Publications:
"Policy Space for Mexican Maize: Protecting Agro-biodiversity by Promoting Rural Livelihoods," by Timothy A.
Wise, GDAE Working Paper No. 07-01, February, 2007.
"Revaluing
Peasant Coffee Production: Organic and Fair Trade Markets
in Mexico," by Muriel Calo and Timothy
A. Wise, October 2005.
Confronting
Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance
in Mexico, Timothy A. Wise, Hilda
Salazar, and Laura Carlsen (eds.), Kumarian Press and
Editorial Miguel Angel Porrua, 2003. (Published in Spanish
as Enfrentando la Globalizacion: Respuestas Sociales
a la Integracion Economica de Mexico, Laura Carlsen,
Tim Wise, and Hilda Salazar, eds., Editorial Miguel
Angel Porrua, 2003.)
See other globalization publications
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