The Food Consumption Pattern of the Free Market: The Mexican Experience Under NAFTA

The Ghost of Scarcity and the Return of Malthus

Hunger is by far the classic theme of the food question. As Jean Ziegler has noted, the battle against hunger is undoubtedly one of the great failures of the twentieth century (Ziegler, 2011, p. 11). At the end of the eighteenth century, Thomas Malthus offered the arguments for the dominant explanation of modern hunger. For Malthus, food scarcity constituted a natural mechanism to regulate population. Although there exist critical positions to Malthus’ ideas, including Marx’s, his perspective remained dominant until the twentieth century, only to be temporally overcome after World War II, when food production increased and the end of hunger was thought to be only a matter of time. Shaw (2007) argues that pessimism in the population–food relationship has resurfaced five times since its original formulation by Malthus: (a) in the 1890s; (b) after World War I; (c) in World War II; (d) in 1965, with the famines in Southeast Asia; and (e) with the crisis of 1974. And it is possible to add a sixth, in the crisis of 2008.

At the World Food Summit of 1996, one of the millennium goals established was to halve the hungry population by 2015. However, this goal was frustrated by the rise in food prices in 2008. The dominant explanation for the rise in food prices points to a problem of temporary or permanent scarcity (by ecological limits or climate catastrophes) in a context of increased international demand (principally from China and India). Moreover, this perspective led to the conclusion that, in the face of rising or persistent hunger, what is needed is an increase in food production: ‘a strong supply-side response’ (Conceiçao & Mendoza, 2009, pp. 1175–1176).

Harmful Individual and Family Habits Due to Lack of Information or Education

The second explanation draws on the mainstream economic theory, which assumes that each consumer determines his or her food demand based on his or her preferences and possibilities (income) and the market conditions (prices). The market mechanism guarantees consumer sovereignty, that is, the individual’s power to direct the production of goods towards one’s own preferences. Consumers and their appetites are at the heart of the dynamics of the economy, the market being the best mechanism to ensure the satisfaction of social needs. In this sense, if there are problems arising from the choice and supply of food, these are due either to market failures, or to individual choices based on limited rationality having to do with lack of information and education or to wrong estimates of the future (Fine, 1998, p. 33).

A Temporary Imbalance Between Cultural Habits and Modern Life

The third explanation claims that the process of development and modernization produces a temporary imbalance. Some national cultures have lagged behind the rapid material changes associated with modern life, such as urbanization, sedentary lifestyle, greater participation of women in the labor market (and their lesser dedication to the family and the kitchen) and the increase in income and possibilities of choice (García, 2012, p. 9). It is estimated that a 10 per cent rise in income per capita translates into a 4.4 per cent increase in obesity (Development Initiatives, 2017, p. 13). Thus, health problems are said to arise because, for example, Mexican people continue to eat, by cultural inertia, according to the conditions of traditional societies (rurality, scarcity and higher physical activity), but now under the new modern conditions. From this perspective, ‘[o]besity and overweight are an unwanted effect of the struggle that countries, like Mexico, have undertaken to eradicate scarcity, malnutrition, and hunger’ (García, 2012, p. 15, our translation).

The Genetic Inheritance Associated with Developing Chronic Degenerative Diseases

The fourth explanation claims that food problems affect the health of specific populations due to a genetic heritage: genes could account for up to 50 per cent of the causality in specific cases of obesity (Vadillo, Zambrano, & Cruz, 2012, p. 211), while approximately 35 per cent of the variability of the body mass index is inherited (Vargas & Bourgues, 2012, p. 188). Different studies have found a more significant genetic disposition of indigenous and mestizo populations to contemporary obesity and chronic degenerative diseases (Vadillo et al., 2012; Vargas & Bourgues, 2012). Millennia ago, among human groups exposed to chronic food limitations, a polygenetic predisposition was developed that, in the current modern context, has become extremely counterproductive. The epigenetic process generated in hunger situations produces a ‘saving metabolic state’, as a result of reduced energy requirement, such that metabolism is directed to protect the brain at the expense of cells of muscles and kidney, which can later favor the emergence of diabetes and hypertension (Vargas & Bourgues, 2012, p. 101).

The Food Industry and Ultra-processed Foods

Finally, for another group of researchers, the problem lies in the expansion of the food industry and the so-called ultra-processed foods. While food processing is an ancient practice, recent developments in food chemistry and engineering, coupled with competitive and profit-seeking practices among companies, have led to a qualitative deterioration of food. Companies take full advantage of food engineering to produce high-value products with cheap inputs (Van der Ploeg, 2010, p. 102). With this strategy, companies manage to exert permanent downward pressure on the prices received by agricultural producers and keep up the food prices for consumers under the pretext of food with good taste or ‘good appearance’. The result is the systematic use of additives such as sweeteners, artificial colors, softeners, preservatives and flavor enhancers, while there is little certainty about the accumulated and long-term effects on the health of consumers (Van der Ploeg, 2010).

Ultra-processed foods are, by definition, products, the manufacture of which involves various stages and processing techniques and various ingredients, many of them exclusively for industrial use, such as soy and milk proteins, meat extracts, substances obtained with the additional processing of oils, fats, carbohydrates and proteins, as well as substances synthesized in laboratories from food and other organic sources. Additives’ function is to extend the duration of food and enhance color, taste, aroma and texture; such additives include hydrogenated vegetable fat, oils, fructose syrup, protein isolates, dough agents, thickeners, emulsifiers, dyes, flavoring agents and flavor enhancers, among many others (Ministério da Saúde, 2014; PAHO, 2015).

The consumption of ultra-processed foods is related to free-market policies. Recently, the FAO and the PAHO acknowledged that the growth in food imports and Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) had led to an increase in the availability of meats, dairy products and ultra-processed foods in low- and middle-income countries (FAO & PAHO, 2017, pp. 41–46).

These are some of the dominant explanations for the malnutrition crisis that, as mentioned before, lack a comprehensive attempt to explain all dimensions of malnutrition. But this is just one limitation. In relation to hunger, the ghost of scarcity and Malthus’ pessimism in the population–food relationship have been revived, with an important difference. There seems to prevail a commitment with the normal functioning of the food system, and, hence, a technological fix is considered enough to overcome the scarcity. Since, at the end, the food crisis is considered just a temporary failure, which the normal functioning of the system will resolve.

In relation to the other dimensions of malnutrition, there seems to prevail an individualist perspective. The malnutrition crisis is seen as a result of individual or family choices because ‘there are no good or bad foods, but good or bad eating habits’. Moreover, the problem would be exclusive to some cultures or some populations (because of their gen heritage) that have been ‘unable’ to adapt themselves to the modernization process. Behind this explanation lies a linear understanding of the development process, with nutrition and epidemiological transition included, that has been widely criticized (Santos, 2014). Thus, the modern diet is naturalized, considered to be a natural destiny, but with different consequences. For some, the modern diet will be accompanied with opulence and ‘the diseases of civilization’, but for others, the ‘less fortunate’ societies, the modernization process is carried out ‘imperfectly’ because of cultural or genetic factors, leading to a greater heterogeneity of nutritional status within populations, with the ‘the diseases of opulence’ without ‘opulence’.

Faced with the seriousness of the crisis of malnutrition and this kaleidoscope of responses and their limitations, it is necessary to develop a more critical analysis of food in capitalism. In this sense, the Mexican experience will be discussed, both related to the change in food consumption patterns and also the food system transformation in the past decades. These are the subjects of the following two sections.

The Mexican Food System Under NAFTA

Today, Mexico is one of the most open economies in the world. In the period 1970–2016, the degree of openness quintupled, from 13 per cent in 1970 to 71 per cent in 2017. Since 1990, Mexico negotiated 14 free trade agreements with 42 countries on three continents, more than any other country in the world. Before the Trump presidency, successive Mexican governments prioritized and supported the free-market strategy, also serving as the promoter of this strategy in the Latin American region.

Regarding the degree of economic openness, the Mexican agricultural sector surpasses the already high degree of openness of the economy as a whole. The Mexican state initiated a unilateral liberalization of the agricultural sector as part of an ambitious ‘modernization program’ in the 1980s. In the post-war period, Mexico, as many others Latin American countries, adopted the import-substitution industrialization strategy, in which agriculture was subordinated to the needs of this urban-industrial growth model with a compensatory policy supporting the agricultural sector with a considerable intervention of the state. In the mid-1960s, Mexico achieved food self-sufficiency. However, this favorable scenario did not last long, as two problems arose in the 1970s: the impoverishment of the rural population and the insufficient production of basic foods against increasing demand. In 1973, Mexico became an importer of maize, the heart of the agricultural economy and food culture; in 1982, the debt crisis exploded; in 1986, the country joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); and, thereafter, open market came into effect.

NAFTA was the decisive step towards the free market. In 1990, the Mexican government asked the United States to include Mexico in its free-trade agreement negotiated with Canada in 1988. NAFTA is a highly asymmetric free-trade agreement, by its North–South character. It comprises considerably different economies, and in agriculture, these differences are even more significant. Canada, the United States and Mexico agreed that there would not be any special treatments or compensatory mechanisms for Mexico, the less developed member as established in the GATT.

For Mexico, one of the central objectives of NAFTA was the transformation of the agricultural sector, by modifying employment and land use, and generating the reallocation of productive resources from activities, which were unable to compete with US imports to those that have export possibilities. NAFTA set separate bilateral agreements in agri-cultural trade and eliminated most non-tariff barriers in agriculture, with sensitive products, such as sugar and maize, receiving, in theory, the longest transition periods. Approximately one-half of US–Mexico agricultural trade became tariff-free when the agreement went into effect (Villarreal & Fergusson, 2018, p. 17). A decisive step towards the productive resource reallocation was the modification of Article 27 of the Mexican constitution, meant to ‘release’ land from the ejido communitarian property regime that had been established after the Mexican Revolution. In general, the Mexican government promoted NAFTA by means of a discourse, which claimed that it would generate a positive balance for Mexican society: although it would tend to harm some agricultural producers, the uncompetitive, all individuals would benefit as consumers. It also argued that the United States, being the leading agri-food exporter in the world, could become the ‘best and permanent food supplier in Mexico’ (Fritscher, 1996).

After more than 20 years of NAFTA, the free market realized successfully the intention to integrate the agri-food markets between Mexico and the United States. Trade among NAFTA partners has more than tripled since the agreement entered into force and the Mexican market was the fastest-growing major export market for US goods at the time (Villarreal & Fergusson, 2018, p. 15). Trade liberalization has allowed the entry of food imports (cereals and meats), feeds (sorghum and soybeans) and inputs for the processing industry (dregs for brewing, fructose and syrup, oil palm, glucose and dextrose and malt), while it has enabled the growth in Mexican agri-foods exports, principally beverages (beer and non-alcoholic), vegetables and fruits (tomatoes, chilies, and peppers, watermelons, cucumbers, avocados and onions; see Table 2).

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Table 2.

Import and Export Trade Matrix US-Mexico

Top 15 Mexican Food Imports 1991/1993		Top 15 Mexican Food Exports 1991/1993
Item	US Origem (%)	Item	US Destination (%)
Sorghum	99	Cattle	99
Soybeans	97	Tomatoes	99
Maize	99	Beer of barley	78
Sheep	99	Melons,	99
Sugar refined	72	Bananas	86
Wheat	62	Coffee, green	85
Cattle	90	Cucumbers and gherkins	99
Cake, soybeans	97	Pumpkins,	99
Pigs	90	Onions, shallots, green	99
Rapeseed	0.1 (1)	Molasses	84
Sugar Raw Centrifugal	6.7 (2)	Chillies and peppers, green	99
Tallow	99	Watermelons	100
Oil, rapeseed	12 (3)	Mangoes, mangosteens, guavas	88
Oil, sunflower	34 (4)	Vegetables, frozen	98
Sunflower seed	3.4 (4)	Lemons and limes	96
Top 15 Mexican Food Imports 2015/2013		Top 15 Mexican Food Exports 2015/2013
Item	US Origem (%)	Item	US Destination (%)
Maize	96	Beer of barley	81.23
Wheat	66	Tomatoes	97
Soybeans	86	Sugar refined	88.2
Rapeseed	2.6 (5)	Sugar Raw Centrifugal	84
Dregs from brewing, distillation	100	Cattle	99
Cake, soybeans	99	Chillies and peppers, green	99
Sorghum	92	Wheat	1.8 (7)
Fructose and syrup, other	99	Watermelons	99
Rice	83	Cucumbers and gherkins	99
Meat, chicken	95	Maize	6.5 (8)
Oil, palm	0.2 (6)	Avocados	78
Meat, pig	87	Lemons and limes	90
Tallow	97	Molasses	40 (9)
Glucose and dextrose	98	Onions, dry	87
Malt	84	Beverages, non alcoholic	94
(1) Poland and Canada
(2) Cuba and Guatemala
(3) Germany
(4) Argentina
(5) Canada
(6) Guatemala and Costa Rica
(7) Algeria and Trukey
(8) Venezuela
(9) United Kingdom

Source: FAO STAT Matrix trade US-Mexico.

About animal origin foods, the United States is by far the leading supplier of Mexican livestock imports. Domestic supply data show that import dependence has increased for all AO foods in the period from the 1980s to 2013, with the exception of eggs: bovine meat from 0 to 14 per cent; pig meat from 0 to 35 per cent; poultry meat from 0 to 21 per cent; milk from 11 to 23 per cent; offal from 9 to 39 per cent; and animal fats from 23 to 69 per cent (see Table 3). Animal origin imports are mostly waste, sometimes dairy cows that have finished their productive cycle (Ruiz et al., 2008, pp. 157–171). The products that have little demand in the US market are exported to Mexico at a low price, as is the case with cuts of poor appearance, meats that remain too long in refrigeration or offal and other products that have no market demand in the United States (Ruiz et al., 2008, pp. 183–184). The United States was already the leading supplier of milk and derivates to the Mexican market, before NAFTA came into effect, but with market opening, the imports structure was modified and production of dairy derivates, such as cheeses and yogurts, increased (Mariscal et al., 2008, p. 64).

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Table 3.

Animal Origins Foods Domestic Supply Structure

KG/PER CAPITA		1961/1980	1991/1993	1994/2006	2007/2013		1961/1980	1981/1993	1994/2006	2007/2013
Domestic supply quantity	Bovine meat	9.4	14.0	16.5	16.3	Pig meat	12.0	13.3	11.6	14.1
Import		0.0	0.6	2.6	2.3		0.0	0.4	2.4	4.9
Production		10.0	13.5	14.0	14.8		12.0	12.8	9.7	10.1
Import dependence		0%	4%	16%	14%		0%	3%	20%	35%
Domestic supply quantity	Poultry meat	4.7	9.3	21.4	29.0	Milk	96.5	111.3	111.9	117.9
Import		0.02	0.69	3.55	5.99		11.1	26.0	25.7	27.6
Production		4.6	8.6	17.9	23.1		85.5	85.4	87.2	91.9
Import dependence		0%	7%	17%	21%		11%	23%	23%	23%
Domestic supply quantity	Offals, edible	3.1	4.8	5.2	5.3	Fats, animals, raw	2.6	5.2	6.8	7.3
Import		0.3	1.4	2.0	2.1		0.6	2.8	4.5	5.0
Production		2.8	3.4	3.2	3.3		2.0	2.5	2.3	2.4
Import dependence		9%	29%	39%	39%		23%	53%	66%	69%

Source: FAO STAT: sheets food balance Mexico.

PO foods, or basic grains, are the food group most affected by trade liberalization. As mentioned before, the Mexican government explicitly intended to deactivate the production of basic grains by stimulating their replacement by US supply. Another fact of relevance is the enormous capacity of the United States in establishing the prices of these products, while Mexico remains a price taker.

Maize is the essential food product for Mexico, the staple food; it is the second most important product produced in tons after sugarcane, and the first in terms of cultivated area and rural employment. This cereal was central in the debate initiated by the free-market reforms for being a sensitive product and, consequently, it received the most considerable transition period in liberalization (15 years). However, in 1997, the government suspended this measure, appealing to food security reasons, and thus massive maize imports entered the country without any tariffs. This decision benefited transnational corporations (Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Maseca), the main importers, exporters and distributors of the product, as well as manufacturers of livestock feeds and the livestock agroindustry.

Domestic supply data show that maize import dependence increased from 8 per cent to 28 per cent, with a significant rise in supply in the Mexican market. The production of rice, wheat and beans plummeted during the NAFTA period, especially in the case of the first two. In fact, for wheat and beans, the rise in import dependence translated into a reduction in the total domestic supply, from 58.6 kg to 51 kg per capita, and from 13 to 12 tons per capita/year, respectively. In other words, the growth in food imports did not compensate the national production collapse, although wheat imports multiplied six-fold. For rice, the fall in domestic production was more than offset by imports, as supply increased by 30 per cent (see Table 4).

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Table 4.

Basic Grains Domestic Supply Structure

KG /PER CAPITA		1961/1980	1981/1993	1994/2006	2007/2013		1961/1980	1981/1993	1994/2006	2007/2013
Domestic supply quantity	Wheat	44.0	58.6	53.4	51.7	Rice	5.1	5.5	6.1	6.1
Import		5.2	8.8	27.4	33.0		0.3	1.3	4.0	5.3
Production		41.1	50.3	31.5	31.0		5.1	4.1	2.2	1.2
Import dependence		12%	15%	51%	64%		5%	24%	65%	86%
Domestic supply quantity	Maize	167.4	198.2	228.5	257.9	Beans	15.9	13.9	12.2	10.6
Import		14.1	30.2	50.3	71.5		0.6	1.8	1.0	1.2
Production		160.8	163.8	185.2	186.2		15.9	12.9	11.6	8.8
Import dependence		8%	15%	22%	28%		4%	13%	8%	11%

Source: FAO STAT: sheets food balance Mexico.

Concerning FDI, data from the Mexican Ministry of the Economy indicate that in the period 1999–2011, of the total FDI that arrived in the country, 10.4 per cent went to the agri-food sector. It was directed to the livestock sector (poultry and pig production), the cultivation of high-value vegetables (broccoli and asparagus) and in industries that process food and beverages. FDI from the United States is present throughout the food supply chain in Mexico, from production and processing to restaurants and retail sales. Transnational firms control 35 per cent of the pork industry, and Mexico is the third largest recipient of US FDI in processed foods and beverages (Clark et al., 2012, p. 60).

It is possible to identify some critical links between these results and the deterioration of Mexican food consumption patterns of the last section. Also, it is possible to perceive that the consequences of free-market policies are not reduced to merely a change in food origin and the replacement of national producers for foreign. Despite the relevance of these results, it is important not to confuse the effects of the free market, as a specific and, therefore, limited historical period, and the long-term trends of the capitalist agri-food system.

The Mexican Maize Food System Under the Capitalist Agri-food Tendencies

The imposition of the free market on the agri-food sector does not mean that most of the production and consumption of food is necessarily carried out through the world market and much less that it is a free market, in which the free flow of goods predominates. Only 15 per cent of world agricultural production crosses national borders. However, what free market means is the subjection of the rest of the 85 per cent of domestic production to the prices and trends that govern the world market (Van Der Ploeg, 2010, p. 101). In addition to the increase in import dependence, which leads to market vulnerability, the dominant tendencies of the capitalist agri-food system have imposed themselves on the Mexican agri-food system. The fate and role of maize within the capitalist agri-food system, its subsumption under capital, is one of these long-term trends, as discussed in the work by Santos (2018).

Although a whole set of production practices (monocultures and intensive use of water) and chemical inputs (fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides) has characterized capitalist agriculture, a crucial moment in its development seems to have occurred when seeds were modified in a conscious and controlled way. The manipulation of seeds is as old as agriculture but acquired a very particular meaning in the United States in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The ‘maize revolution’ initiated the production of hybrid seeds with the objective of producing cheap maize for livestock and the food industry complex, and not for human consumption.

The development of capitalist agriculture was carried out by the degradation of maize. This ‘plant of civilization’, as coined by Fernand Braudel, was massively converted into cattle feed, a food industry input, and just considered direct human food for poor and peripheral populations, for example, indigenous peoples. This fate for maize has been emerging since the sixteenth century when it was identified by Europeans ‘as food suitable only for desperate humans or pigs’ (Messer, 2000, p. 104). In the nineteenth century, while England imported wheat for its population, it turned to maize for alleviating hunger in Ireland and as a ‘feed’ for workers in its African colonies (Messer, 2000, p. 105). For Americans, maize was from the beginning a vehicle to obtain a profit, unlike its purpose for the indigenous populations of the continent, for which maize constitutes, until today, the heart of their civilization.

Simultaneous to the maize reconfiguration, or degradation, wheat acquired the status of the most important cereal in the world. This importance is not derived from its nutritional content, or from its productivity (it is the most expensive cereal), or world consumption—rice is the most consumed, as it is the primary staple among populous Asian societies. The importance of wheat, its recognition as the cereal par excellence, has more to do with its colonial past. The world consumption of wheat is the only one that has grown and will continue to grow, especially among the countries of the capitalist periphery, where its consumption expands, replacing other cereals (Food and Agricultural Organization [FAO], 2003, p. 51).

This difference between the destinies of wheat and maize within the capitalist food system also finds expression in the path taken by the development of transgenic seeds, specifically the failure of transgenic wheat. At the beginning of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Monsanto tried to repeat the great success of maize and soy transgenic seeds that are tolerant to the Roundup herbicide and presented applications in Canada and the United States for the approval of Roundup Ready Wheat. However, only two years later, the company was forced to withdraw these requests and to publicly declare its intention to stop the research and development of transgenic wheat. The leading cause of this prohibition was merely that the primary use of wheat is human consumption, which generated rejection among consumers in the United States and Europe (Falkner, 2009, pp. 239–241). Nowadays, transgenic wheat is still illegal, although Monsanto has not abandoned its technological innovation. In the past months, Canada suffered from blockages to wheat export because transgenic wheat pollution was found. In a recent article published in the journal Science, this exclusion of wheat from transgenic transformations is noted with some surprise, even calling it the transgenic technology orphan (Wulff & Dhugga, 2018).

The fact that maize is the primary objective of biotechnology and currently the most cultivated transgenic crop in the world followed by soy (also used mainly as livestock feed) is not a random or just some natural propensity. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) reports 426 events (successful transgenic modifications) in 29 different food plants. Maize headed the list with 165 events, followed by cotton (58) and potatoes (47). Regarding wheat, there is only one record (the one mentioned made by Monsanto) and seven for rice. ¹

This versatile incorporation of maize into the main agri-food sector has an important effect on food consumption (see Table 5). It is not only the confrontation between humans and other animals for maize but also its appropriation by agri-food industrial corporations with the objective of using them as foods, as inputs, as feeds and as agro-fuel, depending on where the highest profit is to be obtained.

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Table 5.

Maize Uses

Main Uses of Maize
1. Human consumption	4. Maize oil: for human consumption and for cosmetics industries
2. Feed for cattle and to produce isolated protein: cattle, pigs, poultry and even fish farming	5. Sweeteners: maize syrup with high fructose content present in soft drinks, sweets, dairy products, salad dressings, frozen foods, breads, canned fruits, bottled juices, granola bars, breakfast
3. Starches: processed foods, batteries, matches, cleaners, deodorants, hair products, cosmetics, medicines. In food and beverages, maize starch thick the ingredients, retain moisture, stabilize ingredients, prevent separation and replace fats.	6. Others bioproducts: citric acid and lactic acid, amino acids (added to feed for livestock or pet food), vitamin C and E, Xanthan gum (stabilizer), agrofuel (ethanol)

Source:

The link between the uses of maize and the growing noxious characteristics of the capitalist food pattern are clear. The American way of eating is based on one or other version of maize as an input present in soft drinks, fried potatoes flour, hamburgers, sauces and salad dressings, baked goods, breakfast cereals, in almost all poultry and even most fish and, more recently, even in cars. The increase in ultra-processed food production is a direct result of maize subsumption under the capitalist logic.