Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the co-op provides its members with a more reliable income than other
area farmers. For its owner families, the co-op takes on the role abdicated
by the government-dismantled National Food Staples Company.
This income precludes the need for U.S. migration. Structural adjust-
ment programs, and later NAFTA, opened Mexican markets to subsi-
dized U.S. inputs, making farming a diffi cult economic proposition.
These political and economic processes have fueled migration to the
United States. However, unlike many farmers in the area, all fi fty-two
co-op owner families and their children have stayed in Anáhuac. Accord-
ing to one farmer and co-op member, “Most of the people who go to
the U.S. make more money, but they're not happy. To be happy, you have
to be in our own land” (quoted in Stone 2009). El Ranchero Solidario
allows its member owners to maintain control of their system of food
distribution, and thus, their food sovereignty and livelihood.
In addition to providing income for farmers, the co-op supplies gro-
ceries to approximately 1,000 customers per day. Goods include produce,
eggs, meat, cheese, fl our, corn, and other staples. It also carries bread
and cookies from a nearby Mennonite village, organic amaranth from
Teotihuacán, and Oaxacan fair trade coffee grown “in solidarity with
the Campesino a Campesino movement” (quoted in Stone 2009). The
co-op attempts to appeal to a broad base of customers through such
diverse products, which allows it to succeed economically.
Like the U.S. food justice movement, the work of El Movimento
Campesino a Campesino and El Ranchero Solidario is constrained by
state policies that favor the export-oriented and input-intensive agricul-
ture enabled by the Green Revolution and mandated by the IMF and
World Bank. Such policies confi ne the norms of participation embedded
in these programs to everyday economic practices of production and
consumption—such as agroecological techniques and local distribution—
that do not embody political opposition to the globalization of agricul-
ture. And yet, these programs help their participants develop what
Holt-Giménez (2006) calls “structural literacy” in which ordinary people
learn to see their own circumstances as the result of transnational social,
environmental injustices.
5
Thus, projects such as Campesino a Campesino
and El Rancho Solidarity may help to develop the critical consciousness
and social networks through which actors may eventually confront their
political and economic constraints. In the next two examples, govern-
ment policies support food sovereignty. Thus, they represent a vision of
what Campesino a Campesino and El Rancho Solidarity might someday
become.
