The Transformation of Mexican Agriculture: International Structure and the Politics of Rural Change

-"This work is a significant contribution, rich in data, as well as being at the forefront of world-systems oriented analyses of agricultural development (or de-development) and income distribution problems in lesser-developed countries." -F. LaMond Tullis, Brigham Young University In spite of be most thorough agrarian reform in nonsocialist Latin America. Mexico cannot feed its population. Steven Sanderson attributes the problems of Mexican agriculture to an internationalization of the food system promoted by the Mexican state, the trade system, and agribusiness,. Recent Mexican public policy, in particular, has brought about the adoption of international standards of production that are transforming Mexican agriculture. By treating the role of international and national factors in structuring rural development, Professor Sanderson suggests the potential contributions of other case studies to an understanding of global patterns. In addition, his presentation of a new set of data on U.S. and Mexican agriculture clarifies the interaction of a modernizing agricultural society with the world's largest t agricultural producer. Steven E. Sanderson ,,s Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is the Author of Agrarian Populism and the Mexican State: Struggle for Land in Sonora (California) and editor of The Americas in the New International Division of Labor (Holmes and Meier).