4T don't stand for tacos: An analysis of food and environmental security considerations in the new Mexican government's agricultural agenda

Abstract

On his first day in office, on 1 December 2018, freshman President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) delivered a speech outlining 100 policy priorities of his administration. The present study analyzed the contributions of this government’s program relating to food security and their environmental implications, and whether they contributed to strengthen the state or improved human security, considering that the poor and marginalized were at the center of AMLO's campaign. In total 45 policy priorities were geared to consolidate the state, while 55 contributed to improving human security. Only six were related to food security, including stipends to food producers and purchasing grains at guaranteed prices, a fertilizer distribution program and subsidies for cattle husbandry and fisheries/aquaculture. These programs contributed to advancing 10 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, especially those related to Zero Hunger and Reduced Inequalities. Various policy programs had explicit considerations towards climate change and land degradation, including the exclusion of natural protected areas from agricultural subsidies, and recognized that food production is vulnerable to climate change. The four agricultural programs analyzed may advance AMLO’s goal of avoiding food imports, while curbing rural poverty. However, available evidence is mixed regarding animal acquisition loans, which are likely to have adverse environmental outcomes. Finally, the program for developing agroforestry operations is already contributing to deforestation, and further ecosystem degradation is most likely to occur from the introduction of timber and fruit species to natural forests as this program does not preclude the inclusion of recently cleared plots. If human development goals are to be reached, along with fulfilling the international commitments on sustainable development and environmental conservation, policies need to be implemented that simultaneously tend to a booming transnational industry, while bringing forward the rural poor, who amount to nearly half of the country's population.