From Sugar to Blackberries Restructuring Agro-export Production in Michoacan, Mexico

In recent years, economic crisis in the sugar industry and the closure of an important sugar mill in Michoacan, Mexico, have fostered the entry of transnational agribusinesses that contract with local growers for blackberry production. Land concentration is under way as wealthy growers rent ejido (agrarian-reform) land to grow berries and small-scale growers shift to less capitalized berry production or migrate out of the region. An analysis of the impact of this transition, part of the globalization of the agro-food system, on campesinos, workers, and their communities reveals that a general improvement in the economy has been accompanied by increased inequality, concentration of land ownership, and out-migration, a division of labor by gender that is detrimental to women, and damage to human health and the environment due to increased use of pesticides.