Spatial and Temporal Changes in Crop Species Production Diversity in Mexico (1980–2020)

Abstract

Crop species diversity is a key component of agroecosystem resilience, food system stability, ecosystem services production, and sustainable development. Despite its importance, quantitative understanding of crop species diversity is often lacking. This study assesses changes in crop species production diversity in Mexico from 1980 to 2020 at state, regional, and national levels. Measures of crop species richness and effective diversity (alpha, beta, gamma) were derived from government production data on 304 species, each stratified into rainfed and irrigated components. Time series of these components reveal three main findings: (1) diversity generally increased during the study period, especially among fruits, vegetables, spices and herbs, and ornamental crops; (2) the diversity of irrigated crops was about two times higher than the diversity of rainfed crops, despite comprising a small fraction of the total cultivated area; and (3) the diversity of irrigated crops increased dramatically after implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994—though most increases occurred in dry northern regions where production depended on unsustainable irrigation. In sum, findings show that while crop diversity can contribute to numerous forms of sustainability, not all diversification processes derive from agroecologically-based, sustainable forms of intensification. In Mexico, crop species diversification was associated with a post-1994 boom in produce exports to the United States and the unsustainable use of scarce water resources at home. Such context-specific understanding is crucial for determining whether crop diversification, in all its forms, ultimately leads to sustainable outcomes.

Crop Species Production Diversity Enhances Revenue Stability in Low-Income Farm Regions of Mexico

“…Irrigation intensity was found to be the strongest positive predictor of revenue stability in Models 1 and 2, which supports Hypothesis 2. The predicted positive association was based on studies highlighting the benefits of irrigation to crop production, productivity, and sustainability in Mexico [43,55,68,74], and other studies identifying a close association between irrigation and crop species diversity in Mexico [48,61]. As such, the findings of this study contribute to a growing list of irrigation benefits to crop productivity, sustainable development, and farming risk reduction in Mexico.…”

“…Crop species diversity was calculated from the SIAP crop production data. The harvested area (ha) of each crop species was used to calculate Shannon effective diversity, a commonly used index that combines richness and evenness diversity components into a measure of the effective number of crop species per equal area [48,49]:…”

“…The first group consists of a limited number of studies that confirm the negative effects of detrended temporal instability of precipitation and temperature on revenue stability [24,33]. The second group of studies shows that crop diversification can mitigate the negative effects of temperature and precipitation (weather) variations [6], enhance productivity in arid environments [48], and serve as a mitigation or adaptation strategy for coping with climatic uncertainty [69][70][71]. While most studies have focused on the role of crop diversity as a response to climatic change or instability in terms of stabilizing production (output) or productivity (yield), this study extends the analysis to include diversity effects on revenue stability.…”

Long-term spatiotemporal patterns in the number of colonies and honey production in Mexico

“…Although irrigated or industrial agriculture modality in Mexico covers four times less area than rainfed agriculture 47 , we find a strong correlation between increases in irrigated industrial agricultural area with respect to declines in the percent change in yield. Historical trends in agricultural land use indicate that irrigated industrial agriculture area has shown increases in most of the country, but specifically in the North of Mexico which has a strong impact on reducing honey bee colonies 47,48 . A possible explanation for the relationship between honey bee declines and the increases of both categories of agricultural land use, but particularly of irrigated industrial cropland, is attributable to agricultural expansion that, in turn, reduces natural habitats decreasing the availability of floral resources in natural areas and increasing nutritional deficits 49 .…”

Diversification of Fresh Asparagus Exports from Perú

“…The diversification of exports and export markets has proven to be a successful approach for several countries, especially in the context of fruit exports (LaFevor, 2022). This diversification process can be an effective strategy for developing countries to advance their economic development and reduce their dependence on a limited number of products or markets (Vázquez, 2016).…”