POLI 332 Research Paper Proposal

Research Question: How have free trade agreements, such as NAFTA, affected the food sovereignty of Chiapas?
My research question has evolved and changed a lot over the past five days. I knew from the start that I wanted to focus my research on food and agriculture, however over the course of a few days I had many experiences and met many new people that helped me to narrow down my topic.Wednesdays class and discussions about neoliberalism and free trade made me realize the politics of food, especially in a less developed country such as Mexico. After class, at La Casa del Pan, Marella and I ran into Robyn, a friend of a friend who is writing her undergraduate thesis on food sovereignty as a form of resistance for Dalhousie’s International Development program. I had never heard of food sovereignty before but Robyn got me interested in it and gave me some good sources of information contacts. Friday during class, we went back to TierrAdentro and met Peter Rosset and Maria Elena Martinez from the organization La Via Campesina. Peter has written a lot about food sovereignty and Maria Elena has just published a book on organic coffee production in Chiapas. I also found out that one of our neighbours is writing a thesis on coffee production for a university in Norway. Since this assignment is to be very much based on what we have learned from the people around us that we have met, I decided to research the effect that free trade has had on Chiapas’ food sovereignty, with a focus on coffee production.
When I began to look into agriculture in Chiapas, I found out that Chiapas is the biggest producer of organic coffee in Mexico and that Mexico produces the most organic coffee in the world, which made me think about coffee and free trade. People of all countries and cultures drink coffee, however, only a few parts of the world have the necessary climate for growing it. What affect has the North American Free Trade Agreement had on the food sovereignty of Chiapas? The concept of food sovereignty which was developed by the group La Via Campesina in 1996 argues that food and agriculture are about more than the trade of economic commodities. La Via Campesina explains food soverienty as the right of rural peoples to define their own food and agriculture, to regulate trade in order to achieve sustainable development and to determine their own level of self-reliance. Food sovereignty promotes trade policies that will help people to achieve safe, healthy and sustainable food production. Do the policies of NAFTA promote sustainable food production? Do they impede people from defining their food and agriculture?
I decided that coffee would be a good case study for this research since Chiapas produces such a large amount of coffee. I realized that a farmer in Chiapas, when deciding to grow coffee beans, is entering the global market by default, since the amount of coffee that Mexico produces is far more than the country itself could consume. Therefore, what would make a farmer in Chiapas decide to grow coffee instead of another crop? Does free trade have an effect on his/her decision? How does this affect food soveriegnty, as the right for people to define their agriculture? Has the amount of coffee production increased in Chiapas since 1994? Has organic coffee production increased as a result of NAFTA? How have free trade agreements affected the world price of coffee and thus the income of Chiapan coffee growers?
Perhaps free trade has decreased Chiapas’ food soveriegnty insofar as that it made export production easier and more profitable and thus forced people to revert to production for the world market (ie coffee) instead of producing for the local market. Another hypothesis is that since NAFTA, the farmers of Chiapas have become more aware about their food soverienty and their right to define their own agriculture, thus supporting resistance movements that emphasize these rights. Or perhaps free trade agreements have not influenced farmers’ actions or decisions at all and they have always been aware of their need to be self-reliant.
It is obvious that many questions exist surrounding this issue, and I also have many possible answers to these questions. To find answers to thsee questions I will look to other people’s research as conduct my own research first hand here in Chiapas. Through my connections with Maria Elena from La Via Campesina as well as my new neighbour, I hope that I will be able to talk to some coffee growers of Chiapas to get their perspectives on the issues of free trade and food soveriegnty.