Introduction to issue 61 of the Revista de Geografía Agrícola

Abstract

The Revista de Geografía Agrícola (Journal of Agricultural Geography) is a publication that, like the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo (Autonomous Chapingo University), fully identifies with the social actors who practice subsistence farming and who lack the resources to carry out commercial farming, where the aim is to obtain products to send to market. In these, the activity to satisfy peasants’ needs prevails and, therefore, they have been unprotected from public policies for more than 30 years, in which subsistence farming became the “agriculture of the poor,” those that do not deserve consideration in productive promotion policies and are only included within social assistance programs. Therefore, at this time of political change in the country, and particularly in light of the public policies to be pursued by the new government which has announced that priority attention will be given to the poor and indigenous people of Mexico, we express our approval and place our hope in these statements, the trajectory and good intentions of the country’s new president to look towards the other national farming sector, which accounts for 80 % of all production units, which have little land and produce 50 % of the food that provides food security, that which is the safeguard of Mexico’s biocultural heritage, of agricultural and natural biodiversity, of technological and culinary heritage, and of Mexican culture and national identity; all of this is fundamental for Mexico, but paradoxically ignored until now by the governments in office, whose result is manifested in poverty and grinding marginalization in the countryside.