ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the process of internationalization heightened Mexico’s problems of rural underdevelopment. After having achieved food self-sufficiency and raised rural living standards in the thirty years leading up to the mid-1960s, the country is plagued by a profound agricultural crisis. Agricultural development proceeds through a complex interaction of market pressures and government policy. Mexican agriculture has been strongly influenced by the rapid transformation of the whole society. The agricultural sector was generating sizable amounts of foreign exchange from traditional agroexports to fund industrialization. The most important phenomena to influence the evolution of land utilization patterns in Mexico are the notable increase in the area cultivated and the marked change in the composition of crops grown. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that a strategy of food self-sufficiency in Mexico would not only be efficient but would also contribute to reversing the profound economic and social crises in which the country presently finds itself.
