Farmer Movement Oversight of the Mexican Government’s Scaled-up Fertilizer Program
Date: January 2025
Author(s): Jonathan Fox and Carlos García Jiménez
Publication type: Scholarly journal article
Published by: Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems
How can national policies to promote food self-sufficiency also enable agroecological transitions? Mexico’s recent agricultural policy priorities have shifted from larger, irrigated farms to focus mainly on rain-fed smallholdings. Recent national policies have emphasized both food self-sufficiency and agroecological goals. Yet government funding for conventional agriculture has also continued – including the national scaling up of a program that delivers free chemical fertilizer to smallholders. This study uses institutional analysis to analyze this program from the perspective of a state-wide farmer-led oversight campaign led by advocates of sustainable agriculture. Community-based policy monitoring combined with multi-level advocacy broadened access to the program and reduced corruption, while also calling for biofertilizer options and investment in soil health.
Jonathan Fox is director of the Accountability Research Center (ARC) and a professor at the School of International Service (SIS) at American University in Washington, D.C. He collaborates with a wide range of social and civil society organizations in Mexico and other countries. His books in Spanish, as author or editor, include Subsidios para la Desigualdad: Las políticas públicas del maíz en México a partir del libre comercio (2010), Derecho a saber: Balance and perspectivas civiles (2007), Derecho a exigir respuestas: Reclamos de la sociedad civil ante el Panel de Inspección del Banco Mundial (2005), and Indígenas mexicanos migrantes en los Estados Unidos (2004). He has also published in the Mexican journals Rendición de Cuentas, Gestión y Política Pública, Migración y Desarrollo, Perfiles Latinoamericanos, Foro Internacional, Política y Gobierno, Investigación Económica, and Revista Mexicana de Sociología, as well as La Jornada del Campo. His recent articles in English have appeared in World Development, IDS Bulletin, Development Policy Review, and Development in Practice.
Carlos García Jiménez is a native of Ocotillo ejido in the municipality of Coyuca de Benítez, Guerrero, Mexico. He is an agronomist with a specialization in rural sociology from the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo. Since 1987 he has been a promoter of community, regional, state, and national social organizations on issues of agrarian rights, agroecology, alternative marketing of rural products, alternative rural education, municipalism, and public policy advocacy. He is currently director of Promotores de la Autogestión para el Desarrollo Social, member of the board of directors of the Universidad Campesina del Sur, advisor to the Coordinadora de Comisariados Ejidales y Comunales de Guerrero and the Unión de Pueblos de Coyuca de Benítez y Acapulco, president of the Fundación Produce de Guerrero, associate of the Foro Permanente de Organizaciones Sociales de Guerrero, promoter of the collective Guerrero es Primero, and a convenor of the Red de Promotores del Movimiento Social de Transición Agroecológica en Guerrero. He is also author and co-author of books, pamphlets, newspapers, and bulletins.
