Privatizing the Private Family Farmer: NAFTA and the Transformation of the Mexican Dairy Sector

• Published in: Human organization Vol. 56; no. 3; pp. 321 - 332
• Main Author: McDONALD, JAMES H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oklahoma City, OK Society for Applied Anthropology 01.10.1997; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Agricultural Policy; America; Animal husbandry; Collective farms; Cooperatives; Crop economics; Crops; Dairy farming; Dairy Farms; Dairy industry; Economic Change; Economics; Ethnology; Families & family life; Family businesses; Family Farms; Farm economics; Farm exports; Farmers; Farming; Free trade; Globalization; International Trade; Mexico; Milk; Morphological source materials; NAFTA; North American Free Trade Agreement; Peasant agriculture; Political economy; Politics; Powdered milk; Privatization; Responses; Rural areas; Treaties; World Economy; Central America; Mexico; Competitivity; Breeder; Small scale farming; Bovine; Economic policy; Economic anthropology; Rural association; Agricultural cooperative; Food product; Agrarian reform; Capitalism; Agricultural price; Rural development; Animal breeding; Privatization; Pasture; Economic integration; Family production; Agriculture; Economic change; Dairy farm; Neo-liberalism; Market economy; Milk
• ISSN: 0018-7259; 1938-3525
• DOI: 10.17730/humo.56.3.c47g22l4xx4w086p

This article explores a much neglected class of rural producers in Mexico, commercial family farmers, whose position in a globalizing political economy is treated as either unproblematic or ignored altogether in the agrarian literature. I contend that these small-scale capitalist farmers, as well as their peasant and ejidal counterparts, are being "privatized" under Mexico's new neoliberal agricultural policies, culminating with the passage and implementation of NAFTA. While it might seem logical that capitalist farmers oriented toward commercial production would be pre-adapted for this new free-market model, they are instead subject to new rules for operating in an increasingly hostile, competitive market. In 1993 small commercial dairy farmers in north-central Guanajuato began to seek new organizational forms with which to achieve better market integration and increase profits during a period marked by falling milk prices, increasingly scarce and expensive credit, removal of subsidies, and rising costs of production. Noteworthy among their strategies was the formation of marketing cooperatives. An analytical framework drawn from the new institutional economics is employed to understand and explain the cooperative strategy and why it succeeded in one case and failed in another. A third case, sketched briefly, outlines the initial attempts by an ejido to form a cooperative and create a joint venture with external interests. The article concludes by suggesting several policy recommendations to support Mexico's faltering dairy sector.