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Socio-ecological resilience and environmental sustainability: case of avocado from Mexico

“…This reflects the power of individual farmer and laborer is eroded, and there is a cosmopolitan contraction of mutual respect and diversity for the individual level (Pieterse 2006). There is a reduction in quality of the product for the individual farmer (Stanford 2002) as the larger oligopolistic players dominate resources and erode the small farmer's ability to make a living. Another issue is that individual farmers lack the ability to influence policy formation.…”

“…Mexico is a world leader in the production, consumption and export of the avocado (Coronado et al 2015). A commodity case is described, offering emergent multi-level relationships and constructs (Yin 1994;Stanford 2002) that are theoretically connected (Leung et al 2002) to improve system resilience (Smith et al 2017).…”

“…Meanwhile, developed countries may have addressed food losses at the early production stages, but food wastage reaches nearly 40% at the retail and/or consumption stage (Gustavsson et al 2011). The internationalisation of the fresh fruit and vegetable industry has pushed third world producers, in the global south, towards economic globalisation, to meet an all-year demand by consumers in North America and Europe (Stanford 2002) and, more recently, demand from China. 6 This draws attention to the business entities of the agri-food sector as key change agents of environmental and sustainability well-being.…”

“…Land acquisition in Michoacán has been subjected to ineffective regulation (Stanford 2002) and poor land-usage planning (Bravo-Espinosa et al, 2014) and is more likely through dubious means. In recent years, bloody clashes between rival drug cartels, savvy to the lucrative opportunity, represent the diversification of interest groups into the avocado trade (The Independent 2016; Henderson 2017).…”

Food System vs. Sustainability: An Incompatible Relationship in Mexico

“…Sustainability elements are on the table of the Mexican government, and indeed, Mexico has made climate and biodiversity commitments within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) [9,20]. However, intensive agriculture and forest conversion to agriculture are key drivers of the country's economic development, especially linked to highly rentable foods for export, which currently drives an essential sector of the Mexican economy [1,[21][22][23]. Nevertheless, the increase in economics has not been equitably distributed among farmers and instead, has perpetrated low-paid jobs, with constant risk to agrochemicals, while specific sectors of the population continue to get richer.…”