Mexican Agriculture

Mexican Agriculture

Under NAFTA Mexican agriculture was destroyed, leading to the mass immigration of unemployed farmers up north into the southern regions of the United States. Agriculture has been a key corner stone for the Mexican economy for the past 300 years, and under NAFTA this business has been nearly destroyed in the past 20 years. To understand the situation, one must have an understanding about the history of Agriculture in Mexico, the economic importance of Mexican agriculture both in a national and international level, and a clear understanding of what NAFTA was trying to accomplish vs. the current results. The Mesoamerican Period of Mexican history shows the earliest signs of the importance agriculture played on the early

Cheap labor with little tax between the countries, US manufacturers are drawn to the south to mass produce products to be sold around the world, sparking the debate of job loss in America. Life in Maquiladoras is brutal and the working conditions are atrocious and, simply put, a violation of Human rights. Numerous workers have given reports telling of the chemicals that they breath in, the unsafe machinery that is being used and the disregard for the Mexico’s labor laws. Heavily subsidized corn entered the Mexican market place at cheaper production costs lowering the consumption price. This put thousands of Mexican farmers out of work, which in turn contributed to the mass migration farmers looking for work. Unemployed farmers cross the border into the southern regions of the United States getting work as manual laborers. Capital is then extracted out of the US economy and put back into the failing Mexican economy. Despite all of these setbacks NAFTA has also been credited with the increase of the Mexican middle class, with the fact that “a Tufts University study found that NAFTA lowered the average cost of basic necessities in Mexico by up to 50%”. NAFTA also lowered consumer costs, so for those who could afford these necessities could save big, giving more cash, back to the average Mexican consumer, this allowed Mexico to graduate more engineers than Germany each year. Not only were Mexican farmers jobs destroyed, the EPI economist Robert Scott estimates some “682,900 U.S. jobs have been lost or displaced as a result of the trade agreement.” Job loss wasn’t the only important aspect of Mexico that was affected, NAFTA introduced large scale transportation of goods between countries, requiring the mass use of fossil fuels, as well as pesticides in crops with unsafe GMOs. NAFTA also contributed to environmentally