Description

The inclusion of the agrarian sector in the North American Foreign Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has created controversy since the beginning of negotiations. Mexico’s official vision has been that free trade, as well as agricultural reforms initiated in the country in the late eighties would transform the sector and increase national income; NAFTA opponents, on the other hand, claim that the Agreement has resulted in food dependency, massive rural migration and aggravated poverty. This paper present the main results of our econometric research on the true outcomes of nearly ten years into the NAFTA and around fifteen years of agrarian reforms, in terms of prices, trade and domestic agricultural production. Our findings suggest that the much-expected transformation of the Mexican agricultural sector has not occurred.