Legislation/Policy Article from All-Creatures.org

NAFTA Changed the Face of Mexico’s Food System, Leading to Devastating Public Health Implications for its People

From Lindsey Collins, BSc, MASGIS, RN, BSN, T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies
November 2022

Eating NAFTA… exposes how changes in policy following NAFTA have fundamentally altered one of the most basic elements of life in Mexico – sustenance. Mexicans face a food system that favors food security over subsistence agriculture, development over sustainability, market participation over social welfare, and ideologies of self-care over public health. Trade agreements negotiated to improve lives have sometimes failed, resulting in unintended consequences for people’s everyday lives.

The T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies (CNS) interviewed Alyshia Gálvez, PhD, during the 2021 Plant Forward workshop series, which focused on regaining control of our food system. Alyshia Gálvez is a cultural and medical anthropologist, award-winning author, and Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at Lehman College of the City University of New York. In the interview, she discussed the consequences of changing food policies, systems, and agricultural practices in Mexico and the United States. Her focus on trade and economic policy, and their public health implications, is also the subject of her 2018 book, Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico (UC Press, 2018).

“Eating NAFTA… exposes how changes in policy following NAFTA have fundamentally altered one of the most basic elements of life in Mexico – sustenance. Mexicans face a food system that favors food security over subsistence agriculture, development over sustainability, market participation over social welfare, and ideologies of self-care over public health. Trade agreements negotiated to improve lives have sometimes failed, resulting in unintended consequences for people’s everyday lives.” -Alyshia Gálvez, PhD.

What is NAFTA?

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the United States, and Canada came into force in 1994. “[It] eliminated tariffs and barriers to trade between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, uniting them in a single market and facilitating direct investment and the flow of goods across borders.” A key moment in the trend toward globalization, the beginning of NAFTA has had, “the effect of distributing the consumption of industrial products far and wide.” In her critique of NAFTA, Gálvez points out that the trade agreement opened the borders to the flow of goods and capital but did not equally liberate the flow of labor, with consequences for the populations of all three countries.

Issues addressed:

• What were the intended outcomes of NAFTA?
• What are the most significant assumptions supporting NAFTA, and are they borne out?
• What have been the outcomes of NAFTA?
• What are the agricultural outcomes of NAFTA?
• What are the traditional methods of food production, and what is milpa-based cuisine?
• What has been the response to these outcomes of NAFTA?
• What can we do to regain control of our food system?

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

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