Working with Maize: Livelihood, Agrobiodiversity, and Uneven Development in Mexico’s Central Highlands
Open Access
- Author:
- Mullaney, Emma
- Graduate Program:
- Geography (PHD)
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- November 06, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Brian King, Program Head/Chair
Leland Glenna, Outside Unit & Field Member
Melissa Wright, Major Field Member
Carolyn Sachs, Co-Chair of Committee
Karl Zimmerer, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor - Keywords:
- geography
women's studies
political ecology
gender
maize
Mexico
ethnography
agrobiodiversity
farmer livelihoods
agricultural extension
CGIAR
agriculture
feminist
diverse economies
uneven development - Abstract:
- This research investigates the complex relationship between agrobiodiversity and livelihoods in the Central Highlands of Mexico by studying the everyday lives of four key categories of actors: 1) small-scale commercially-oriented maize producers; 2) agricultural research scientists; 3) agricultural extension agents; and 4) maize populations. This inquiry is prompted by a seeming empirical paradox, according to leading theories of agricultural modernization: populations of genetically-diverse locally-bred varieties of maize, along with the diversity of knowledges and practices that maintain them, persistently dominate the small-scale farms of Mexico, even as these varieties are increasingly rendered obsolete, at least within the dictates of a global commodity market, by the recent economic transformations of agricultural modernization. The country’s Central Highland region provides a unique opening for inquiry into these dynamic relationships. It is at once home to some of the world’s foremost centers of maize research, which partner with regional and multinational biotechnology companies to aggressively promote the adoption of “modern” scientifically-bred maize varieties, and also to small agrarian communities that consistently and, in many cases, exclusively cultivate maize varieties they have bred themselves. Three major questions have been insufficiently explored in academic research: First, how do those involved in maize production, both directly and indirectly, conceive of and engage agrobiodiversity? Second, how do relationships to agrobiodiversity vary within and across maize-centered livelihoods? Third, how do these relationships shape development institutions, agricultural technologies and practices, and trajectories of agricultural change, and whose purposes do they serve as a result – i.e., why do certain socioecological relationships emerge and persist? My dissertation research addresses these questions by examining the contradictions of agrobiodiversity and agricultural modernization in Mexico’s Central Highlands through the perspectives and practical activities of the four groups, enumerated above, whose lives are implicated in the dynamics taking place. Bringing these perspectives together, I argue that processes of uneven agricultural development in the region are highly negotiated, with actors working from within and without existing social and institutional structures to pursue multiple, overlapping objectives. These tensions have produced a dynamic and contradictory landscape of persistent maize genetic diversity, for which adequate explanations are currently lacking. In this research, I find that maize diversity is persisting in the Amecameca Valley because farmers are maintaining economic diversity. This research also finds that, despite all rhetoric to the contrary, the current agricultural development projects at work in the region are undermining, rather than supporting, smallholder maize producer livelihoods.